Toms Town Kansas City And The Pendergast Legend

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TENSION ENVELOPE COHP.

Political and social hlstorj of Kansas City,
T T O.~ ^ro:n the virile '70*s to the present,
theV^ars %hich sav the rise ana fall of
ast dynasty.

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DEMCO 38-297

KANSAS CITY AND THE PENDERGAST LEGEND

by
WILLIAM M. REDDIG

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY
WILLIAM M. REDDIG

PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FIRST EDITION

To J, P. G., who took me to the Old Town

KANSAS CITY [MO) PUBLIC LIBRARY

Foreword

THE KANSAS CITY STORY

THIS is A STORY of the House of Pendergast, the family that exerted a
major influence on Kansas City, Missouri, politics for a half -century and
finally established a dictatorial control that extended to the Missouri
State Capitol and had important national ramifications.

This is also a story of a town, which for several interesting reasons
calls itself the Heart of America. The two tales are really one and the
spirit and substance of American politics are the things of which the
whole narrative is made.

If one were seeking a complete pattern of the evolution of the boss
system and municipal government in the industrial period of the shape
of American democracy at the seat of origin one would not need to
look farther than Kansas City in the years of Pendergast ascendency
and decline. The design is perfectly clear, the details are complete, the
local, state and national aspects in bold relief. A good deal of that is in
this story.

This writer was impressed by the fact that the House of Pendergast
rose to power and national notoriety in the home town of William Rock-
hill Nelson, one of the more vigorous, independent and highhanded
newspaper publishers, who was dedicated to the anti-boss crusade and
earned a seat among the giants of city building and progressive reform.

The Pendergasts and Nelson came on the Kansas City scene at ap-
proximately the same time, and prospered side by side despite each other*
They were often at odds, their contests were vigorous and exciting
and they had a profound effect on the character and experience o the

8 FOREWORD

city which numbered around sixty thousand when they first saw it
and which now numbers nearly one-half million inhabitants, not count-
ing the one hundred and thirty-five thousand in the second Kansas
City which is on the west or Kansas side of this metropolitan area on the
Missouri-Kansas state line. The results of that struggle were reflected in
various startling ways in the affairs of the main antagonists and that
struggle continues today in the schemes and hopes of their successors.

Nelson, the supreme individualist and archenemy of the old party
bosses, died shortly before the United States entered the First World
War. The Pendergast machine rolled to oppressive power on the in-
dustrial and business boom tide of the postwar years, entrenched itself
in the chaos of the depression years, grew fat and arrogant on the boodle
from the spending spree that accompanied the national economic re-
covery. It fell ,apart in a fantastic series of crimes that disturbed the na-
tion and were climaxed by the sending of Big Tom Pendergast to
Federal prison in 1939.

The reckoning, which came when the nation was being aroused to
prepare for another world war, was followed by an effort to make radical
changes in municipal government and party organization, an effort that
has continued in the 1940^ and promises to produce more excitement.
In a large measure this development represents a triumph for Baron Bill
Nelson 'and the Fourth Estate over the old political boss, for most of the
changes that have been accomplished are reforms which Nelson first
espoused and the driving force behind the defeat of Pendergast and the
rise of the new regime was Nelson's newspaper, the Star, no longer Nel-
son-owned but still directed by men who grew up under the founder.

Whether this Kansas City episode rounds out an era and defines a
permanent forward step in good government are questions that only
time and the experts may settle. Such findings are outside the province
of the newspaperman who wrote this book in the first place because he
knew some' good stories of Alderman Jim Pendergast and Old Town,
of Uncle Joe Shannon and Fifty-Fifty, of Big Tom Pendergast and the
Free and Easy, of City Manager McElroy and Rabbi Mayerberg's cru-
sade, of Senator Jim Reed's feud with Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt,
of Governor Stark and Emmet O'Malley's Missouri Compromise, of
Harry S* Truman and the presidential destiny, and many others con-

4*

FOREWORD 9

cerning various Goats, Rabbits, Republicans, North Side operators,
South Side uplifters, Old Missouri revivalists and the remarkable, par-
tisan Nonpartisans. They all belong in the book along with the solemn
particulars of the business upon which politicians, their friends and vic-
tims expend an agonizing amount of attention.

In some ways this is a somber story but perhaps not a tragedy. For
certain individuals concerned and for the masses whose main interests
were at stake, it covers an interval that may have been the unhappiest
time in American memory. But the politicians did their best to lighten
the gloom and the Kansas Citians managed to be not too doleful through
it all. In fact, they produced a surprising amount of laughter, which
seemed genuine for it made a fine sound above the cries of anguish and
the shouts of rage.

W.M.R.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Staxmen mentioned in this narrative are but a few of
many staff members of the Kansas City Star whose accounts
were helpful in the writing of this story. For their excellent
reporting; for the privilege of using Kansas City Star^ ad-
mirable library facilities; for permission to quote from Star
articles, interviews and editorials; for the loan of Star photo-
graphs reproduced in this boo\ and for permission to repro-
duce cartoons by the StarV talented caricaturist, S. /, Ray, the
writer ta^es this way of expressing his profound appreciation*

Contents

1 NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE .

KAWSMOUTH 17

TRAVELERS' CHANCE 23

KING OF THE FIRST 28

THE RABBITS AND THE GOATS 33

BARON BILL 37

2 FIFTY-FIFTY

STORMY PETOEL 49

REFORM IN OLD TOWN 67

WHOSE TOWN? 73

THE KNIFING 82

FREE AND EASY 85

3 BOOM TIME

DEMOCRACY, INC. 95

DEMOCRATIC AID SOCIETY 98

RETIRING THE LITTLE CZAR 104

LITTLE TAMMANY 109

THE NONPARTISAN CHARIER 115

COUNTRY BOOKKEEPER 123

1908 MAIN 13

HOME RULE 14

THE PARTY MEN i5 2

GAMBLER'S REVIVAL 160

OF THE PEOPLE *68

ii

12 CONTENTS

4 THE HEART OF AMERICA

UP AND COMING 176

MCELROY'S COFFEE GROUNDS 185

THE CHALLENGE 189

WINNER'S LUCK 200

BATTALION OF DEATH 206

SUCKERS, PURE AND SIMPLE 214

THE NEW YOUTH 225

ELECTION DAY 237

THE SHOWDOWN 243

DEATH AND BROTHER JOHN 248

5 OLD MISSOURI

THE MAN FROM INDEPENDENCE 265

THE BIG MONEY 275

UNCLE TOM'S HEART 279

GHOSTS 284

BALLOTS, JUDGES AND MEN 287

THE INGRATE 294

FREEDOM BEGINS AT HOME 297

SHOW ME 304

6 PAY-OFF

THE LUG 311

DAY IN COURT 323

COUP AND DOUBLE CROSS 331

MARY'S ANSWER 340

Vox POPULI 354

THE PUBLIC PEACE 364

GOOD GOVERNMENT 369

THE FINAL STAKES 377

INDEX 387

Illustrations

(Halftones following page 192)

FIGHTING JIM

JACKSON COUNTY JEFFERSONIAN

JUST BEFORE THE FIREWORKS STARTED

COUNTRY BOOKKEEPER

BIG TOM
THE BRIDE'S FATHER STOLE THE SCENE

THE HEART OF AMERICA

WHERE "KING TOM" HELD COURT

POLITICIAN'S DAUGHTER

GETTING THINGS DONE

CRUSADING EDITOR

CAPTAIN HARRY

THE SENATOR FROM MISSOURI

ON WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE

NECKTIES AND POLITICS

JUDGMENT DAY

FOUNDER OF A POLITICAL DYNASTY

CAMPAIGN TIME IN INDEPENDENCE

PLANNING THE COMEBACK

"REACH FOR ALL"

CARTOONS

THE ONLY ISSUE 79

"AH, A LOOPHOLE!" "9

SYMPATHY, JUST SYMPATHY *55

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE, ALL AROUND THE TOWN 229.

i 4 ILLUSTRATIONS

OUT-GHOSTING THE GHOSTS 285

SHORT MEMORY 319

THE ARK SPRINGS ANOTHER LEAK. 335

ONLY THE FIRST ROUND 361

HERE COME THE BOYS 379

North Side, South Side

KAWSMOUTH

VANDALS AND REFORMERS have conducted a long and not very successful
campaign against the statue of Alderman Jim Pendergast which sits in
Mulkey Square, near the west end of Twelfth Street, overlooking the in-
dustrial West Bottoms where the Pendergasts grew, up with Kansas City.
The statue of Boss Tom Pendergast's brother was placed there in 1913,
paid for by popular subscription, unveiled before three thousand ad-
mirers of Alderman Jim, and was meant to stay. Consisting of three
pieces Alderman Jim and two cherubs the memorial was designed
and cast in bronze by the famous Chicago sculptor, Frederick C. Hib-
bard. It is esthetically satisfying to everyone except a bluenose Repub-
lican or a junk dealer, a fact that was painfully impressed on the loyal
Democrats several years after the dedication ceremonies when the heavy
bronze figures of Jim's two youthful and beautiful companions were
stolen by a crew of despoilers whose identities were never learned, but
who obviously were uncommonly desperate and physically powerful
men. The outraged Democrats proceeded to order duplicates of the
kidnaped young couple and saw to it that this art work was fastened
down more securely.

The attack on the memorial of the saloonkeeper who founded the
Hjouse of Pendergast continued for many years. Sum total of this
earnest labor of defacement consists of three missing arms from the
boy and girl who kneel beside Alderman Jim. The miscreants who made
off with the arms must have been animated by a stronger sentiment
than delight in destruction or the larcenous instinct, for it took several

i8 TOM'S TOWN

hours of painful toil with a hacksaw to cut through the metal, and the
salvage value of each fragment was not more than fifty cents in the
prewar market. It seemed obvious to all thoughtful citizens of the North
Side that only a Republican would have the fanatical strength and
determination to perform such a futile work.

An attempt to revive the anti-Pendergast movement in Mulkey Square
was made not long ago at the height of the Nonpartisan reform when a
virtuous leader of the Chamber of Commerce penned an impassioned
appeal to the associated promoters, traders and herders who run the
town. "I do not see," he declared, "why Kansas City should be disgraced
any longer by having a bronze monument of a saloonkeeper on one of
its most beautiful drives, and especially as that saloonkeeper bears the
name of Pendergast, which has been such a great stigma to Kansas City/'

The only effect produced by this agitation was a raucous laugh on
Twelfth Street.

Old Jim is pretty durable, any way you take him. He sits in his alder-
manic chair beside Kersey Coates Drive with a benign welcoming look
and a proprietary air. He belongs in Mulkey Square. He was one of the
promoters of the great industrial scene that spreads before him at Kaws-
mouth, where the Kaw River and the Missouri, the West's "Big Muddy,"
have their confluence. He is the man most responsible for the fact that
the district bounded on the south by Twelfth Street still is considered
the Pendergast political domain, which another Jim, nephew of the old
saloonkeeper, is directing.

The people who placed the statue were thoughtful enough to set it so
that Alderman Jim looks directly over the ground where he operated
the saloon and inn that established the family's fortune in business and
politics. Twelfth Street at this point intersects Kersey Coates Drive and
plunges west over a viaduct into a bottomland region of railroad tracks,
warehouses, freight offices, factories, packing plants, stockyards, bridges
and viaducts. Some six blocks west is the Kansas-Missouri state line and
just beyond that boundary the Kaw or Kansas River winds to its Im-
minent meeting with the Missouri. Off to the right the great bend of the
Missouri at Kawsmouth is clearly visible from the eminence on which
the Pendergast memorial stands.

The view from Mulkey Square takes in the main part of the industrial

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 19

congregation which has made Kansas City the butcher, miller and dis-
tributor o the Missouri Valley region and is a scene that is, recommended
to strangers who are confused when they are told that Kansas City is not
in Kansas and was not named for that state. The enterprise got under
way here thirty years before Kansas Territory was qualified for state-
hood and accepted into the Union in 1861. The Kansas plains were popu-
larly known as the Great American Desert. That territory didn't seem to
have a future until it was entered by reckless and headstrong promoters
from New England, and the result was Bleeding Kansas, John Brown of
Osawatomie, grasshoppers. Prohibition, Carrie Nation, cyclones, dust
storms and, finally, Alf Landon,

On the other hand, the Show Me Land on the east side of the line was
called the Great Blue Country by the early settlers. The blue skies, the
blue waters in the springs and the streams that emptied into the Big
Muddy, and the blue mist on the hills at sundown made the name right.
Memory of that time survives in names like Blue Mills, Blue Mound,
Blue Valley, Blue Springs, the Little Blue and the Big Blue rivers all
in Jackson County and, somewhat less directly, in the Kansas City
Blues, frequent occupants of the cellar position in the American Asso-
ciation of Baseball Clubs.

Kansas City probably would have been named Port Fonda if Abra-
ham Fonda hadn't been feuding with Henry Jobe in 1838 when they and
several other pioneer real estate developers got together to organize a
townsite on 256 acres purchased for $4,200 from the estate of Gabriel
Prudhomme, French fur trader and farmer. The democratic issue which
was to trouble this community so greatly in subsequent years figured im-
mediately in the original transaction, for Mr. Fonda listed himself as
Abraham Fonda, Gentleman, and Henry Jobe belligerently identified
himself as Henry Jobe, Carpenter, declaring that he would have nothing
to do with a town that was named for. a man who assumed the effete
air of a gentleman. The Jobe faction voted consistently against Port
Fonda and grew more eloquent as the jug was passed around. After
long debate, the proprietors agreed to seek incorporation as the Town
of Kansas, the name deriving from a festive Indian tribe * known as the

*The Kansas or Kaw Indians were famous for their feasting, dancing, spccchmaking
and gambling. A remnant of the tribe resides in Oklahoma.

20 TOM'S TOWN

Kanza or Kansas, which native poets have translated to mean People of
the South Wind. Although the compromise choice didn't have the hi-
falutin sound which most of the town's owners would have liked, it was
most appropriate, for their settlement owed its existence and its hope for
the future to the fact that it was situated just below the mouth bf the Kaw
River.

Nature had favored this site as the gateway to the unexploited West
in every way except one it didn't eem possible that men could push
back the towering river bluffs at this point to make room for a town of
any consequence, or that they would be able to cut trails through the
wooded hills so that passengers and freight from the Missouri River
steamboats could be moved to the Kansas plains for the long run west
by pack train and prairie schooner. That is, the prospect was dishearten-
ing to all except a few large investors in real estate. They were hustlers
and go-getters of immense purpose, men like John C. McCoy, son of a
famous Baptist missionary to the Indians and moving spirit in the or-
ganization of the two towns that grew into modern Kansas City.

McCoy started the promotion in the region of what is now Kansas
City's South Side even before there was a North Side. His first enter-
prise was Westport, four miles inland from the river landing, which he
established as a rival trail town to the original county-scat town of In-
dependence. Popular legend has it that McCoy laid out Westport with
his wife's clothesline, but this has been discredited as a myth, probably
fostered by envious Independence merchants. The man who founded
Westport in 1833 was no bungler, and his town quickly eclipsed Inde-
pendence as the head of the Santa Fe and Oregon trails. It was on the
west side of Jackson County, adjoining the Kansas line, while Inde-
pendence lay on the east side and was isolated by several streams that
created fording problems for the travelers. After starting Westport on its
way, McCoy turned to the development of the river settlement near Ka ws-
mouth, then known as Westport Landing and important only as the
place where the Missouri steamboats unloaded freight and people for
die short but difficult haul to Westport. Both enterprises were wcfl
under way in time to catch the bulk of the outfitting business pro-
vided by the forty-niners and other wayfarers in the great migrations be-
fore the Civil War.

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 21

Promoter McCoy and associates were so certain that Westport Landing
had a greater future than Westport that they called it the .City of the Fu-
ture. After purchasing the townsite and naming it the Town of Kansas,
they had some difficulty with legal details and sales resistance, but by
1846 they had the boom started and it has been fairly constant in the
succeeding century. Colonel Kersey Coates, prophet and builder who
started the West Bluff phase of the development in the 1 850*8, estimated
that the Kawsmouth project would grow into a community o a half-
million residents. It absorbed old Westport at the turn of this century.
Counting the Kansas Citians on both sides of the state line, the Colonel's
prophecy now is out of date and a few years ago his daughter, Laura
Coates Reed, upped the figure to two and possibly three millions.

All this came about in spite of the predictions of the people of the
rival river towns of Lexington and St. Joseph, Missouri, Atchison and
Leavenworth, Kansas, who thought that their towns were meant to be
the City of the Future and were annoyed by the big talk of the early
Kansas Citians. These scoffers admitted that ancient Rome made a good
thing out of its seven hills, but what could be done with the seventy-
and-seven hills of the Town of Kansas ? They said that the Kansas City
mountains were congenial only to strange types of men and animals.
Among the beasts that inhabited this fearsome wilderness was a species
of wild cattle with two long and two short legs on opposite sides rather
than ends. The first permanent bluff dwellers were a few fearless char-
acters like Old Pino, the pioneer fur trapper and mountain man, who
came up the Missouri in 1815 with an expedition of the American Fur
Company. Old Pino, a Frenchman whose real name was Jacques Four-
nais, lent a hand in Kansas City's first commercial activity at the trading
post established in the Kawsmouth region by Francois Chouteau. After
the big westward rush set in, Old Pino retired to a cabin on Kersey
Coates's Hill to spend his last years, confident that he had found a place
where civilization would never overtake him. He lived to be one hundred
and twenty-four years old and it is said that the thing which hastened
his end was his excitement at the sight of the first railroad locomotive
chugging in the West Bottoms. The age of the mountain men finally
ended in 1869 when the first bridge across the Big Muc^;, a railroad
structure Octave Chanute's famous Hannibal Bridge for the Hanni-

22 TOM'S TOWN

bal & St. Joseph Railroad was built just below Kawsmouth and the
Kansas Citians staged an enormous celebration in anticipation of the
greatest traffic rush of all time.

The City of Kansas knew then that nothing could stop it, for it had
survived floods, cholera, ague, border war, civil war and a multitude of
lesser hazards. It had made the bluffs habitable by the expenditure of
prodigious energy and by great fortitude. Reports circulating in envious
neighboring towns indicated a large number of Kansas Citians were
crippled in tumbles from the bluffs to the tops of buildings during the
heroic excavating period. These accidents did not in the least dampen the
enthusiasm of the pioneers, who were well fortified with mountain dew
and the indomitable spirit of real estate agents.

When Jim Pendergast first saw the West Bottoms, the industrial de-
velopment was just getting well under way and the West Bluff still re-
tained t some of the aspects of a jungle. Before he died the west face of
the bluff was -transformed into West Terrace Park, with stone walls
and terraces giving the hill the appearance of a massive citadel. Behind
this battlement the towers of downtown Kansas City rise.

The spectacular development at Kawsmouth Vequires poetic treat-
ment to do it justice and that detail was attended to many years ago by
a rugged Kansas poet, C. L. Edson, who was imported by Colonel Nel-
son's Star to celebrate the wonders and glories of the City on the Kaw*
Charlie Edson produced numerous rousing items and achieved local
immortality with his "Epic of Kansas City," a ^narrative of heroic
quality, of which these verses arc a good sample:

The herders and the traders and the sod corn crew,
They planted 'cm a city when the world was new,
They planted Kansas City and the darn thing grew.

The bearcat killers and the Dan Boonc clan,

The boys that taught the panther his respect for man.

They planted Kansas City where the bull trails ran.

Ships made Carthage, gold made Nome,
Grain built Babylon, the wars built Rome;
I-vbgs made Chicago with their dying squeal,
Pittsburgh at the birth of steel.

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 23

Come Kansas City, make your story brief:
Here stands a city built o* bread and beef.

This is Kansas City, where the tribe trails meet,
The rail head, the gateway, the West's Main Street,
The old tribal stamping ground to stamp your feet.*

Among the bearcat killers of Kawsmouth, Alderman Jim Pendergast
was certainly not the least and some day his home town may get around
to admitting that fact, and then do something about restoring the missing
pieces in the arms of the cherubs who attend him in Mulkey Square.

TRAVELERS' CHANCE

JAMES PENDERGAST was a young man with little education and no finan-
cial means whatever when he arrived in Kansas City in 1876. He found
himself in the midst of an international convention of traders, specu-
lators, prospectors, salesmen of gold bricks and snake oil, and sports.

In addition to the economic inducements, Kansas City had a cosmo-
politan flavor and a democratic spirit that made it appealing* to widely
assorted tastes. It was not a Western city but had something of all four
points of the compass. The cattle range began just west of Kawsmouth
but the cowboys and stockmen who came in from Kansas were out-
numbered by the Kentuckians and Tennesseans who were here first,
and they in turn were outnumbered by the men from the East and
North and the lands beyond the Atlantic. The census of 1870 gave Kansas
City a population of thirty-two thousand and revealed that about a
fourth of that number was foreign born. Blanketed Indians still strolled
in the square when Jim Pendergast first saw it, but these sons of the
original owners were outnumbered by large companies of Irishmen,
Germans, Englishmen, Canadians and Swedes who were competing
for the business with the Yankees and the native Missourians. Smaller
groups of Frenchmen, Hungarians, Norwegians, Austrians, Hollanders,
Scotsmen and Belgians joined the rivalry and quickly adapted them-
selves to the local customs. The Italians came along a little later to in-
crease the pressure, Negroes made up a tenth of the population,

* By permission of the Kansas City Star.

24 TOM'S TOWN

The life of the town in this period centered in Market Square, near
the Missouri River levee on the North Side. Horse and mule trading,
farm-produce sales, political rallies, revival meetings, medicine shows
and circuses went on simultaneously in various parts of the public forum,
one part of which was occupied by the City Hall. Political activity came
under the classification of popular entertainment and the party orators
generated so much gas that the citizens were abnormally buoyant. The
spirits of the partisans were revived by frequent visits to the dozen saloons
lining the Main Street side of the square, appropriately designated Battle
Row, which upheld its reputation for disturbance with or without the
assistance of special squads of police.

Everybody but the Indians and the Negroes had a chance or labored
under the illusion that tomorrow he would be able to retire in style.
The promise of riches and the actual acquisition of sudden wealth in a
considerable number of cases filled the fortune seekers with confidence
and an overwhelming desire to prove their luck. They found uncommon
encouragement in this line of endeavor, for the gambling industry at-
tained a high state of development in Kansas City in the 1870'$. The
faro banks at Marble Hall and No. 3 Missouri Avenue were famous
throughout the West. Scholarly gamblers like Canada Bill, who kept
himself solvent betting on Webster's spelling and definition of words,
and colorful plungers like Wild Bill Hickok, the two-gun marshal of
Abilene, Kansas, made the town their headquarters. Jesse James found
relaxation in the gambling halls during periods when he lived incog-
nito in Kansas City, and was not molested. When they were not figuring
on deals in lots, grain, hogs and cattle and other matters of commerce,
the citizens exercised their financial genius at chuck-a-luck, faro, three-
card monte, roulette, high five, keno, poker and, occasionally, craps*
They bet on horse races, dog fights, free-for-alls with rats, cock fights
and, in an extremity, they played fly-loo. This last game called for rare
judgment, the players placing their money on common houseflies aad
guessing which one would move first, in what direction and how far.

A brief depression struck the happy Kansas City gamblers in 1881
when a Legislature controlled by farmers passed the Johnson anti-
gambling law. The Kansas City protest against this interference with
freedom was registered in melodramatic fashion by Bob Potee, the ele-

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 25

gant Virginia gentleman who was proprietor o the faro bank at No. 3
Missouri Avenue. Potee saw the Johnson law as the ominous dawn o
a new era and decided he didn't want to be around to witness all the
changes that were coming. One day he put on his high silk hat and
gloves, picked up his gold-headed cane, and took a walk down to the
Missouri River. He kept walking majestically until the muddy waters
swirled over his head. His body was recovered and the town staged an
appropriate ceremony of farewell to a great man and his age. His funeral
service was held in a Grand Avenue church and the Reverend Samuel
Bookstaver Bell, a popular preacher of the day, delivered an impressive
sermon over his casket. Literally, as in the words of the "Cowboy's La-
ment/' six tall gamblers bore the casket into the church and carried it
out for Bob Potee's last journey to his Virginia home.

The same year that Bob Potee prematurely decided that gambling had
no future, Jim Pendergast started up the road to success by backing his
Judgment on a horse. A nag named Climax, a long shot, romped in
ahead of the field and Jim was riding on its nose with savings from his
wages as a puddler in the Jarboe Keystone iron foundry.

Pendergast used his winnings conservatively, setting himself up in
business as proprietor of an inn and a saloon in the West Bottoms. He
called his inn the American House, but it later became known as Pender-
gast House. His first saloon was named Climax, in tribute to the great
horse that paid off. The future political boss had entered a business with
a future. There were 220 retail groceries and 200 saloons in the city in
1880 and the expert opinion was that the latter trade was further from
being overcrowded than the former, as only the preachers and puritans
were irregular drinkers. Jim had a high regard for the saloonkeeping
profession and defended it warmly in later years when the puritans be-
came more numerous and endeavored to suppress his kind. They moved
him to an expression of disgust when they introduced a bill in the Legis-
lature to bar politicians from the saloon business.

"Well," he said, "there's some saloon men in politics whose word I'd
take before I'd take the word of some men in politics for whom there is
no room in the saloon business.'*

Pendergast's hotel and saloon were on St. Louis Avenue, just below
the West Bluff at Twelfth Street and just around the corner from roaring

26 TOM'S TOWN

Union Avenue, the short thoroughfare that carried traffic to the old Union
Depot and served the basic needs of traveling America for more than
thirty strenuous years.

Union Avenue society took a swashbuckling pride in a reputation for
picturesque sordidness which was believed to compare favorably with
the iniquity of New York's Bowery. Nothing was allowed to interfere
with the business of making the transient's stopover at the midcontinent
interchange point an interesting and instructive interval. At night the
avenue leading from the depot became a midway blazing with light,
tumultuous with the shouts of ballyhoo men and the cries of grays (the
suckers of the day) being whisked out of sight. Booted cattlemen, silk-
hatted gamblers, ticket scalpers, bunco artists, blanketed Indians, Kansas
yokels and scented ladies, strolling by from Paris and New Yc>rk, mingled
in this boisterous democracy. Runners, barkers and cappers employed
various irresistible devices to interest the travelers in the wonders of the
hotels, burlesque shows, restaurants, saloons, museums, pawnshops and
barbershops along the way. A simple matter of getting a haircut often
turned into a strange and expensive adventure in this neighborhood.
You could stroll along Union Avenue and avoid all the exciting experi-
ences it offered, but not if you loitered, for cappers were ever vigilant,
ready to seize you and hustle you inside for the full treatment.

Pendergast's establishment was one of the reputable places of the West
Bottoms. Its genial host catered less to the traveling public than to the
men who worked in the railroad yards and shops, the mills and the.
packing plants. His relationship with Union Avenue was primarily "po-
litical. Within several years after he established himself on St. Louis
Avenue, he won recognition as a figure in Democratic affairs by de-
livering a large number of West Bottoms votes to a successful candidate
for mayor. He moved uptown to a larger saloon at 508 Main Street but
retained his property on St. Louis Avenue. His popularity grew as he
took the lead in opposing agitation for reform on Union Avenue and
other lively spots in the West Bottoms.

The pressure for more decorum increased steadily, for Kansas City
was growing up rapidly and beginning to settle down. On the crest of
the West Bluff above Union Avenue was Kersey Coates's Quality Hill
with his exclusive residential quarter and his Broadway with its luxury

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 27

hotel and its Grand Opera House. The hotel, called the Coates House,
had copper-roofed towers, a white marble swimming pool in the base-
ment, and red plush, mirrors and marble in between. The Opera House
was large and ornate, designed to accommodate the leading road shows
from New York. Stage stars came to the theater and the hotel was filled
with cattle barons, meat packers, capitalists from the East, gamblers and
politicians. Guests looked out upon a cow pond and a Broadway al-
ternately deep in dust or mud. One guest from the East, so the story goes,
stepped outside the Coates House after a Missouri shower and was
startled to see a man standing up to his chin in mud.

"My poor fellow," exclaimed the visitor, "let me help you."

"Oh, I'm all right, mister," said the man in the mud. "I'm standing
on top of a hack. But mebbe you better do something for my passenger."

There were more cows, horses, mules, goats and dogs than people in
the streets, and the bullfrogs in the cow ponds filled the night air with
rustic sound, but the activity on the Hill and beyond to the east and south-
ward made it plain that Kansas City was becoming a place of culture
and refinement, with everything up to date.

The roar of industry in the West Bottoms also grew louder and Mr.
Pendergast became a very busy man serving the social and political in-
terests of the Kawsmouth toilers and businessmen. New industries
crowded out the residences in this section, and work and recreation were
equally strenuous. The entertainment activity reached its height on
West Ninth Street near the Missouri-Kansas state line, The service there
became so popular that it eventually produced the Wettest Block in the
World. It had twenty-four buildings and twenty-three of them were
saloons.

Jim Pendergast was instrumental in keeping the reform out of this
hard-working, hard-drinking locality for many years. Then a crusading
governor forced the police to interfere and they reduced the number of
sajoons in the wettest block to thirteen. That number was regarded as a
bad omen by the saloonkeepers and gamblers, and their forebodings
were borne out several years later when the building of Kansas City's
prcseat Union Station southeast of the Bottoms killed Union Avenue
and threw a pall over the whole social life of the West Bottoms. The
wake, held on Union Avenue on Halloween, 1914, was a carouse that

28 TOM'S TOWN

inspired awed recollection for another twenty years, but the actual
mourning was not prolonged. The change didn't come too soon, since
industry needed the room for the expansion that fulfilled the famous
prophecy of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the Champion of the West
and Hard Money. Standing on a Kansas City hill in 1852, he had called
for fast action in the building of this "grand manufacturing and com-
mercial community," where these rocky bluffs meet and turn aside the
sweeping currents of the mighty Missouri.

KING OP THE FIRST

'TvE GOT a lot of friends," said Jim Pendergast to a friendly newspaper-
man who liked his beer and conversation. "And, by the way, that's all
there is to this boss business friends. You can't coerce people into doing
things for you you can't make them vote for you. I never coerced any-
body in my life. Whenever you see a man bulldozing anybody he
doesn't last long. Still, I've been called a boss. All there is to it is having
friends, doing things for people^ and then later on they'll do things for
you."

Jim Pendergast introduced the friendship-in-politics ideal on a scale
never before known in Kansas City society. The mutual benefit prin-
ciple acquired the force of doctrine in the Democratic faction which the
saloonkeeper controlled. He honestly detested an ingrate and infused
his followers with his own fanatical spirit of personal loyalty. Anyone
accepted into his company was thereafter committed to work unswerv-
ingly for the common cause or suffer ostracism or worse.

Although the mercenary aspect of this movement was always pro-
nounced, Pendergast was a genuinely friendly man. His round, ruddy
face was a picture of Irish amiability and his heavy black mustache did
not hide his easy smile. His voice was soft. He was usually at ease. The
only sign he gave of anger was the swift vanishing of his smile. His
angers were rare, but not light, affairs. His exceedingly agreeable manner
covered but did not conceal a personality of uncommon forcefulness.
The blend of sentiment and authority in his character made him a leader
of the puddling gang before he became a kndlord and a politician. He

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 29

was twenty years old when he came down to Kansas City from the river
town o St. Joseph, Missouri, where his parents had settled, when he was
two years old, and reared a family of nine children. Jim, the second child,
had been born in Gallipolis, Ohio.

"I'm from Gallipolis," he was fond of saying. "That name's a joke," he
added, and his hearers laughed with him.

Puddler Jim became a sort of private banker for the workingmen in
the West Bottoms and thereby he rose to power. In his saloon he es-
tablished the system of cashing the paychecks of railroad men and pack-
ing-house workers. Greenbacks were scarce in those days. Jim installed a
large safe and filled it, paydays, with silver and paper. The workers got
into the habit of going to Jim's place to get their warrants and checks
turned into spendable cash. They spent some of it across the bar but Jim
did not make that a requisite. Men learned that he had an interest in
humanity outside of business and that he could be trusted, and they re-
turned the favor by patronizing his saloon and giving him their confi-
dence.

The genial saloonkeeper spread harmony and Democratic unity over
precincts that had been the hotly contested battleground of the Hickeys,
the Kelleys, the Gaffneys and the Burnetts. Those Irish were notable ex-
ponents of packing-house election rules, which were based on the prem-
ise that the voter's life is necessarily hazardous and muscle must be em-
ployed to determine the will of the majority. Pendergast was versed in
those rules, but he depended primarily on his popularity and his skill
in trading favors and making alliances to promote his interests.

Expanding with the town, Pendergast opened his Main Street saloon,
a block south of Market Square, a year before he became alderman from
the First Ward. From his uptown seat he continued his helpful ways to
the voting masses, but his saloon there was not a workingman's resort.
It was a headquarters for businessmen, lawyers, contractors, boss gam-
blers and officeholders from the City Hall and Courthouse. Jim. was as
popular with these operators as he was with the leaders of shirtsleeve
society in the West Bottoms.

After a decade devoted to doing favors for others, Jim asked for and
received the public recognition that was his due. He stepped up to take
his akkrmanic seat in 1892, in a moment of great and unnatural peace,

3 o TOM'S TOWN

when the city was agitated by nothing more than the normal differences
between Republicans and Democrats, and the Democrats felt that a new
era of good feeling was dawning because their ticket in the city campaign
was supported by the fiery Colonel Nelson of the Star. The truculent
and meddlesome Colonel followed a line which he called "independent
but not neutral/* which was very confusing to the party leaders and often
worked out to the disadvantage of the local Democrats. They won the
Star's approval in '92 by supporting charter amendments which the
Colonel demanded, and by nominating for mayor a plausible individual
named Will S. Cowherd, who later went on to Congress.

Pendergast strode on the stage as alderman and King of the First
Ward at the very time that an ambitious effort was being made to dis-
courage boss politicians through electoral reform. A month before the
city election was held, the town approved a set of charter amendments,
one of which provided that the parties nominate aldermen in each ward
at a primary election, setting up machinery that was supposed to give the
unorganized voter a voice in the selection of candidates. The prevailing
method of making nominations was known as the "mob primary,**
which was simply a mass meeting managed by the party bosses, usually
held in a beer garden or a hall next door to a saloon, and controlled by
the faction with the huskiest and most impassioned ward heelers. One
of the principal advocates of the electoral reform was Nelson's Star.
Curiously enough, another was the boss of the First, Jim Pendergast.
The new system depressed some of the old politicians, who depended on
convention tricks and rushing tactics for their success, but it actually
strengthened the position of Pendergast, who excelled in delivering
votes.

Alderman Jim demonstrated more emphatically that he was the com-
ing man in Kansas City Democracy two years later (1894) when he was
one of the two Democratic candidates who survived the holocaust
brought on by Colonel Nelson's disappointment with the Cowherd ad-
ministration and the abrupt ending of Democratic factional peace. While
the party debacle hurried to its climax, Alderman Jim stood serenely
in the First Ward surrounded by his many friends. The rugged nature of
the Kansas City political competition was displayed in several ways ia lht$
campaign, with the Republicans selecting the occasion to show that tfaey

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 31

could be tougher than the Democrats. The G.O.P. lined up with the
notorious AJP.A. (American Protective Association), .the Ku Kluxers of
the period, who climaxed the campaign with a gun battle. The election-
day massacre occurred in the Fifth Ward, a district usually controlled by
Fighting Jim Pryor, a saloonkeeper and building contractor with a large
Irish following. John Pryor, eighteen-year-old son of Fighting Jim and
friend of young Tom Pendergast, and later one of his important business
associates, set off hostilities when he converted a voter to the Democratic
cause. His subject was an elderly German and the word got around that
Big John Pryor had been so forceful in his electioneering that the old
German was frightened into abandoning long-standing Republican con-
victions. The A.P.A. brigade, armed with deputy constable commissions
and rifles, immediately set out to punish the Irish for this outrage, and
soon captured John Pryor. The Fifth Ward boss's son was being hustled
away to an uncertain fate when a bunch of the boys at Scanlan's saloon
heard of his arrest and rushed joyously to the rescue. The two armies met
on the Summit Street Bridge over the Belt Line. In their haste or be-
cause of overconfidence in their prowess in a free-for-all, the Irish neg-
lected to supply themselves adequately with firearms, only one possessing
a pistol. The A.P.A. men were well armed with Winchesters and when
the smoke cleared one good Democrat lay dead and six were severely
wpunded. There was only one casualty on the other side.

When the votes were counted, the Republican ticket had a handsome
majority except in two river wards controlled by Pendergast and his
allies. This was the beginning of a six-year period of Republican domina-
tion of municipal affairs, a run of success which resulted, in considerable
part, from the Democratic factional disputes. Alderman Pendergast con-
tinued to gain in prestige and influence throughout this lean time for
his party in local affairs, producing majorities that startled veterans in
the vote-getting trade. He finally was credited with carrying a thousand
votes in his vest pocket, and Republican managers complained that
hundreds of his followers crossed the state line from ICansas to vote for
him on election day. He grew accustomed to hearing charges of intimi-
dation of voters and ballot-box stuffing, and dismissed them with a
smile and a shrug.

"I aever'needed a crooked vote," he told a Star reporter who inter-

32 TOM'S TOWN

viewed him late in his career. "All I want is a chance for my friends to get
to the polls."

Charges that he loaded the city payrolls with his friends and supporters
and that he worked to turn city business to firms or individuals in the
party's favor did not disturb him, for he regarded these spoils as the
legitimate rewards of work for the Democratic cause. But he had a code
of ethics which he observed rigorously and which excluded the boss him-
self from political boodle. He boasted proudly that he never took a cent
in exchange for a political favor and not even his enemies challenged his
reputation on that score.

The Pendergast command developed into an efficient team when Jim
called his three brothers from St. Joseph John, Mike and Tom. John
was a quiet and steady man who was completely happy running the
saloon on Main Street. Mike exhibited special adaptability as a rough-and-
tumble man, as an organizer of ward clubs and a public jobholder. Tom
exhibited exceptional talent for all phases of the Pendergast enterprises
in politics and commerce.

Young Tom, sixteen years younger than the Alderman, attained voting
age a year after Jim took office in the lower house of the City Council. He
"appeared on the scene after completing his schooling. He spent more
time in school than any of the other brothers, going from a St. Joseph
school to St. Mary's College in Kansas, where he distinguished himself
a* an athlete rather than a scholar. His baseball fielding and batting
averages were so good that they attracted the attention of a professional
league scout and he was offered a bush league contract. Family opposi-
tion kept him from becoming an early Babe Ruth.

The traits of character that peculiarly fitted Jim Pendergast for the
role of political boss were intensified in Tom, but there were some
marked differences. During his apprenticeship as an election worker, he
was assigned to the toughest precincts and won the respect and friend-
ship of the workingmen in the river wards. In the Pendergast saloons,
where he worked as an efficient bookkeeper, he was a favorite among
politicians, sportsmen and businessmen. The gamblers early admitted
Ifim to their fraternity and his special interest in horse racing, which
later dominated his life and contributed largely to his ruin, probably was
/greatly stimulated during the period when he worked as cashier in a

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 33

Pendergast liquor concession at a race track. The effort to pick another
Climax continued for almost a half-century before it rounded out the
gambler's cycle.

The main difference between the brothers was suggested by their
voices. Jim's light baritone was the voice of the mediator, the promoter
of sociability and goodwill. Tom's heavy bass was the trumpet blast of
a fighter. He was a blue-eyed, light-haired heavyweight who stood five
feet nine inches, weighed around two hundred pounds and exuded
energy from every pore. His head was planted on a short, thick neck
which had the rugged look of an oak tree trunk." The impression of
hugeness about him was emphasized by his face. It was a massive face
great jaw, large mouth and nose. He looked both formidable and en-
gaging, for there was a humorous glint in his eyes, a jaunty air in his
bearing and a sentimental quality in his expression along with the
dominating impression of savage power. The total effect made him one
of the most arresting figures ever observed in Kansas City. He drew at-
tention wherever he went and men remembered him from one look.

The devastating force of Tom Pendergast 's fists and his ferocity when
crossed were early impressed on the citizens of the river wards. His
skill and daring in the manly art of self-defense did not diminish his
popularity with the men of the West Bottoms and Market Square, but
brute force was secondary in the list of his qualifications for the wor|f
he had selected the first was intelligence. Alderman Jim watched with
approval while his young brother balanced the books in his saloons,
made friends with the public and the important men, familiarized him-
self with the needs and interests of the North Side, and endeavored to
emulate Jim in practising the ways of peace, compromise and self-con-
trol. It was early evident that he was being trained to take over the throne
of the King of the First.

THE RABBITS AND THE GOATS

MIKE AND TOM PENDERGAST learned the political routine rapidly and
found all aspects of the business both fascinating and stimulating to
young men who hoped to get ahead in the world, but they soon saw

34 TOM'S TOWN

that they were not getting the rewards or government to which they were
entitled. They did not hold the public responsible for this lack o recog-
nition. The trouble was Joe Shannon, who was building up a monopoly
in the Courthouse and endeavoring to lower Pendergast prestige in the
City Hall. Inasmuch as the more attractive prospects in jobs with fees,
commissions and salaries were then in the Courthouse, something had to
be done to reverse the Shannon, or Rabbit, trend.

The depth o the difference between the two> principal Democratic fac-
tions in Jackson County was something an -outsider could not readily
appreciate, but it was suggested by the names of the rival groups Rabbits
and Goats. These popular designations were coined in the early days
when the majority of the Pendergast following were Irish folk from the
old sod who lived on the West Bluff in the laboring-class neighborhood
that grew up around the residental quarter of the Quality Hill nabobs.
Many of these Irish families kept goats, which had no respect for private
property or class distinctions and made themselves a public nuisance. The
Shannon workers lived over the Hill, in what was then the southeast
part of the town and is now near the center of the downtown business
section. Their homes were close to the wooded bottoms in the valley of
O. K. Creek, where rabbits and other small game frolicked.

In the heat of a campaign an opposition orator called the Pendergast
partisans Goats, after their numerous animal pets. Jim Pendergast liked
goats and happily accepted them as a symbol of his faction's devotion to
freedom and other liberal ideals. Leading his delegation on a march to a
convention for a battle with the Shannon boys, he roared: "When we
come over the hill like goats, they'll run like rabbits." When the contest
was over the Goats had seized control of the City Hall, ousting the
Shannon men from their easy jobs. It was a cold April day when winter
fingered into spring and snow covered the ground. "What will become of
the poor fellows who are losing their jobs?" some tenderhearted citizen
asked. "They'll eat snow, like the rabbits," said a Goat.

The names were appropriate in many ways. The Pendergast Goats
were rugged, combative, clannish and always hungry. The Shannon Rab-
bits were fleet, deceptive and prolific. The Rabbits also had large appe-
tites. They ate snow no oftener than the Goats were compelled to subsist
on tin cans.

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 35

The Daddy Rabbit, the Honorable Joseph B. Shannon, was ten years
younger than the Chief Whiskers of the Goats but politically was quite
as mature as the North Side boss. He made himself the Czar of the Ninth
Ward while Pendergast was establishing- himself as King of the First.
The same year that Jim became an alderman, Joe went on the city payroll
as market master. It was an appointive position, and a Republican revival
limited Mr. Shannon's incumbency to one term. He wasn't able or in-
clined to match Alderman Jim's record for official connection with gov-
ernment in the early period, but he was on the political stage throughout
Jim's time and held his stand there until the last days of the machine
under Big Tom. He was sometimes down, frequently up, usually in the
spotlight. He saw it all and had much to do with shaping the peculiar
style and character of Jackson County politics. At the finish he served a
twelve-year turn as a congressman the Great JefEersonian from Jackson
County and although he did not have much time left to live when the
Kansas City machine fell apart, he stood around trying to pick up the
pieces. When he finally shuffled off after a half -century in the hustings,,
he was a silver-haired, benevolent figure, full of practical wisdom, humor
and sentiment Uncle Joe to everyone, in or out of politics.

Like Jim Pendergast, Joe Shannon belonged to a large Irish family
there were eight Shannon children. Like so many of the individuals who
figured in the Kansas City political and business life, he was traveling
west when chance directed him to this bustling community at Kaws-
mouth. Joe's father was a railroad contractor and his death in a train
collision in Kansas was the incident that brought about the family's move
to Kansas City. The Widow Shannon and her eight children arrived at
the Union Depot one night in 1879. She found friendly people who
helped her to get established in the neighborhood of Fifteenth Street and
Tracy Avenue. The Shannons were poor in everything except character
and ingenuity. The older boys got jobs to provide a meager income for
their mother. Joe quit school at twelve to contribute his small part to-
ward the grocery bill. He and his brothers were good workers but the
family's industriousness was less remarkable than its fighting quality and
its political talent.

The Shannon boys discovered that they were living in the Ninth Ward
an'l that it was the largest ward in the city, controlling one fifth o the

36 * TOM'S TOWN

delegates in conventions proportioned to the population. Long before he
was of voting age, Joe was an experienced politician. The Shannon home
became political headquarters for the Ninth Ward, and every time the
family sat down for the evening meal there was a Democratic caucus.
Their section of the city became known an Shannonville.

Joe Shannon inherited the family leadership upon the death of Frank,
oldest of the brothers, a stonemason and a force in union politics. Under
Joe's direction, Shannonville spread its influence over two wards in the
city and extended its power into the county through alliances with party
men in Independence, the old county scat".

Mr. Shannon made local politics a very involved and exciting business.
He was as rugged a character as Jim Pendergast, almost as rugged as
Tom. He endeavored to play the role of pacifier, like Alderman Jim,
which was fortunate for the public peace as there was always more than
enough disturbance in his domain. The respect he inspired in friend or
foe was illustrated by an incident in the tumultuous election of '94, when
Joe alone cowed an A.P.A. mob. An angry crowd gathered around a
voting booth after someone circulated a report that the Shannon boys
had broken open a ballot box and were stuffing it. When Joe Shannon
appeared in the doorway, the would-be rioters abandoned their plan to
raid the booth in favor of an investigation. He stood there, saying noth-
ing and smiling coolly on the crowd until his commanding presence had
tempered A.P.A. suspicions and indignation.

Mental and physical agility were nicely balanced in the person of the
Rabbit leader. In one election he was arrested for exhibiting muscular
dexterity in ejecting a Republican and a Populist watcher from a voting
,booth at the same moment. One of these individuals filed assault charges
against Shannon in police court and Joe handled his own defense. He was
educating himself to be a lawyer and was anxious to demonstrate his
progress before his followers. His defense was that the complaining wit-
ness had picked a fight after Shannon gave him a friendly pat on the
back, "Like this,'* said Joe, seizing the complainant and hurling him
across the courtroom. The injured party bellowed with rage and charged
at Shannon, the courtroom spectators roared with laughter and the police
judge admitted that the Rabbit chief had proved his case, thereby escap-
ing a five-hundred-dollar fine.

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 37

Joe Shannon was more versatile than either Jim or Tom Pendergast
and, although he scattered his efforts when it seemed that he might have
more profitably concentrated on organization matters, for a long time
he threatened to overshadow his opponents from the North Side. His
skill in planning coups was of a superior order and he delighted in in-
trigue. His plots and ambushes rather consistently advanced the Shannon
cause although they frequently wrecked the Democratic Party.

The No. i Rabbit took the lead in promoting the long factional dis-
order which brought about the final collapse of the Combine, an outfit
that had dominated things political for more than a decade. Both Shan-
non and Pendergast worked in and with the Combine, on occasion, in
the years when they were rising to the command, and their disagreement
with that early machine had nothing to do with reform sentiment but
grew out of the struggle for power. Dissolution of the Combine marked
an important step in the evolution of boss politics. From the wreckage
Shannon and Pendergast emerged with enhanced power and prestige.

Once the stage was cleared for the main bout between the Goats and
the Rabbits, the political struggle grew in intensity, with many interesting
variations being introduced by Jim Pendergast's brothers, Mike and
Tom, and many complications provided by Colonel Nelson of the Star*

BARON BILL

WHEN the Nonpartisan reform wrecked the Pendergast machine in
1940, few of the earnest workers in the cause paused to note that it had
taken a half -century of vast agitation to bring about this event, and none
thought to pay tribute to the man chiefly responsible for it. The move-
ment that unhorsed Big Tom actually got under way a short time after
William Rockhill Nelson arrived in Kansas City and it was operating
vigorously in 1894, in the same election that eliminated the Combine and
marked the emergence of Jim Pendergast and Joe Shannon as bosses of a
new ordf r. In that campaign the candidate representing the Nelson-sup-
ported Nonpartisan ticket finished third. Colonel Nelson was not in the
least dismayed by the defeat of his independent champion. Instead he
was moved to issue an optimistic prophecy. Vindication of the non-

3 8 TOM'S TOWN

partisan idea "does not depend on the result of one canvass/' he declared
in his newspaper. "It will succeed in the end because it is right and be-
cause it is an odious reflection upon the honesty and intelligence of the
people to assume that they will lofrg continue to favor a system which
eliminates the business idea from municipal government.*'

The Nelson doctrine that "municipal government is purely a business
affair 5 * was such a hateful expression of the commercial spirit to both
Alderman Pendergast and Shannon that they eventually banded together
to oppose the spread of this philosophy. Their evangelism for pure Demo-
cratic partisanship (first) and the two-party system (second) was earnest
and colorful and it is easy to believe that the independent-but-not-neutral
heresy could not have prevailed or even survived in Kansas City if any-
body but Bill Nelson had espoused it.

Various experts have tried to estimate the size of the disturbance cre-
ated by the political crusader and builder from Indiana who founded the
Star. One historian determined that there were two factors accounting
for the phenomenal development of Kansas City the great bend of the
Missouri at Kawsi&outh and Nelson.

Julian Street interviewed Nelson for a national magazine and left with
the impression that he had been in the presence of a volcano. "He is even,
shaped like one," Street wrote. The editor tapered upward from a vast
Waist to a snow-capped peak and when he opened his mouth a Vesuvian
rumbling came forth. William Allen White, handing down a final opin-
ion in an article for Collier's wrote: "Mr. Nelson literally gave color to
the life and thought and aspirations of ten millions of people living be-
tween the Missouri River and the Rio Grande*"

Nelson's associates and admirers called him Colonel. "Not that he was
ever a colonel of anything," explained White, who worked for Nelson
before he moved to Kansas to make the Emporia Gazette famous. "He
was just coloniferous." The Colonel's enemies called him Baron Bill and
the Baron of Brush Creek, titles suggested by his bearing and his real
estateJioldi|igs which were on a baronial scale. The accolade of nobility
was intended as^a terin of derision but didn't have that effect, for every-
one thought of Nelson as the Baron even when they called him Colonel.

Nelson was a Hqosier with a good middle-class background based 00
several generations of property owning. There was a family legend of

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 39

aristocratic English connections and Baron Bill liked to think that Lord
Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, was one of his ancestors. He occasionally
spoke of "Uncle Horatio" in a joking manner, but no one took the allu-
sion too lightly for the sea lord who made a monkey out of Napoleon
would obviously have been proud to acknowledge kinship with the
booster who put Kawsmouth on the map.

He was thirty-nine years old when he came to Kansas City and already
had managed one successful career as a businessman, amassing a sizable
fortune as a real estate operator, bridge builder and contractor. A large
part of that first pile was lost in a disastrous cotton plantation, venture in
the South. Nelson entered the newspaper field as an owner of the Fort
Wayne, Indiana, Sentinel a year before he saw his big chance in Kansas
City. He and his partner, Samuel E. Morss, sold out their Fort Wayne
holdings and put their capital in a new Kansas City paper, the Evening
Star, which started its long run under Nelson, September 18, i88o> witli
a brashness that amused the established newspaper proprietors.

There were two morning and two other evening papers in the Kansas-
City field at the time but an evening paper was still a novelty in 1880 and
Nelson's Evening Star was greeted with some derision by the morning
newspapermen, who dubbed it the Twilight Twinkler. Eugene Field,
poet, columnist and antic spirit, then working as editor of the morning
Times, suggested the nickname with this verse:

Twinkle, twinkle, little Star,
Bright and gossipy you are;
We can daily hear you speak
For a paltry dime a week.

The Evening Star was well on its way to domination of the whole field
before the opposition realized that a new era had dawned. The Star
absorbed the Times in 1901.

Nelson quickly bought up his partner's interest in order to have a com-
pletely free hand. He could never bear the thought of the Star having any
other voice than his own.

"The Starr he said repeatedly and firmly, "is the Daily W. R. Nelson."

Readers of the Star had the impression that Nelson was speaking to
thcpa personally each afternoon, and twice a day after he added the Times

4 o TOM'S TOWN

as the morning issue of the Star. They could hear the great voice booming
and feel the power of his personality even though they never saw him.
Few saw him, in fact, after he was well established. He avoided lunch-
cons, clubs and political meetings, partly because he was somewhat self'
conscious in the public gaze, but mostly for the reason that he liked to sit
in the Star office and let people come to him. Although he didn't do any
of the writing, Nelson's stamp was on every line in his paper. He out-
lined what he wanted the Star to say, and because he spoke clearly and
colorfully, many of his own words got into the copy. He imposed
anonymity on all other members of the staff so that nothing might inter-
fere with the communication between the people and the Daily Nelson.

Foundation of the Colonel's success was the cut-rate principle. He
offered the Star for two cents an issue against the standard price of a
nfckel a copy. He had to import a large supply of pennies to make change
for the customers, and Nelson's kegs filled with shining coppers appeared,
to accustom this free-spending community to the idea that the penny
was useful for other purposes than buying licorice sticks. Nelson built
up volume at two cents a day and a dime a week for regular subscribers.
He edited his paper according to the formula that the public didn't want
glaring headlines, half-tones, comics and sports news but was hungry
for lots of particulars about their neighbors' business. He devised a con-
servative format, which he considered artistic and which outsiders gen-
erally describe as odd or quaint. In this dress the Star furnished all the
details, from murders, triangles and business operations to the activities
of dogs and bjuebirds and the antics of babies, presenting these happen-
ings along with tasty literary and educational items clipped from books
and magazines.

Mr. Nelson had arrived in Kansas City prepared for a strenuous fight
with the politicians and he had picked a place where- he could get a
maximum amount of action for his money. His Quarrel with the party
regulars had roots that extended to New York and the early battles
against Tammany Hall. The Baron was himself a" Democrat but not
one of the. Jackson County variety. His hero was not Andy Jackson of
Tennessee but Sam Tilden of Gramercy Park, New York, nemesis of
the Tweed Ring and the Canal Ring. Nelson served as Tilden's cam-
paign manager in Indiana when the New Yorker ran for President in

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 41

1876. Tilden won in the actual balloting but was counted out by one
electoral vote when Congress was called on to settle a dispute over the
returns from four states* Nelson renounced affiliation with the Demo-
cratic Party in 1880, the year he started his paper in Kansas City. There
is a legend that his bolt was induced by pique over the failure of the
Democrats to offer Tilden a second nomination, but the practical con-
sideration was that the independent line gave him a free hand in the
task of subduing the bosses of both parties to the Nelson will.
/ The Tilden influence was important, however, in Nelson's develop-
ment as a reformer. He found that most of the evils of corrupt politics
encountered by Tilden in New York were duplicated in Missouri. The
parallel was so exact, in fact, that he used Tilden's biography,* giving
his account of his battles with the Tweed Ring and the Canal Ring, as
a Star campaign textbook in one of Missouri's greatest political battles.
That was the campaign of 1904 which brought the Folk reform, and
was toward the end of Nelson's career; but long before that, the pub-
lisher had discovered' that the machine operation was highly developed
in this Middle Western region. It included some rackets not adequately
described in Tilden's reports, and Publisher Nelson had to devise
methods of his own to oppose the Little Louisiana Lottery, the policy
gambling gyp, the traction monopoly, the gas gouge, the loan shark
steal, the legal fee grab, the bunco game routine, the paving graft and
other profitable promotions of a fast-growing community which had an
untrammeled sense of freedom.

The politicians immediately discovered that the Baron had the disposi-*
tion and capacity for the rough-and-tumble style favored by the Kaws-
mouth partisans. Since the antagonists were about equally matched, these
struggles were both long and fierce. A classic example is the battle^ with
the traction interests, which raged through the thirty-five years of Nel-
son's career in Kansas City. Nelson led off by putting down the Corrigan
mule car line monopoly when it attempted to block franchises for the new
cable lines and at the same time extend its own exclusive concession. The
Star routed the mule car reactionaries by promoting a "hanging party'*
for the aldermen controlled by the Corrigan interests. Fastening the label

* The Life of Samuel, /. Tilden, by John Bigelow, 2 vols., 1895-

42 TOM'S TOWN

of the Shameless Eight on the men who took Corrigan's orders, the paper
took the lead in organizing a committee of safety headed by the town's
leading citizen. Colonel Kersey Coates, and the vigilante spirit ran high.
A mass meeting of citizens "with ropes" was called for the night when
the Council was expected to act on the franchise matter and the Shame-
less Eight lost their nerve. Corrigan's mules lost out and Kansas City got
cable cars to speed the wheels of progress, but the cable line interests
formed a monopoly and the battle was shortly resumed.

The Star used fighting words with such abandon that its editor in-
curred a'definite personal risk. His critics found that he was fearless and
well protected. One of the notable exhibitions in this field was given
when Joseph J. Davenport, who served a term as mayor in 1889 and
tried unsuccessfully to make a comeback in 1892, called at the Star office
to settle issues with the Baron in the manly way. Editor Nelson was at
his desk in his private office on the second floor when Mr. Davenport
hove into sight, dark and menacing. Nelson moved with an agility sur-
prising-in one of his bulk but, in his haste to square off or get out of
range, he got his feet tangled in his chair and was helpless for one awful
moment.

Whether the Colonel was actually struck or not remains a question to
this day, for there are two versions on that point of the encounter. There
is, however, general agreement on what followed. Four men, stout and
true, arrived in time to form-an adequate reception committee for Mr.
Davenport. They included T. W. Johnston, managing editor, Ralph
Stout, city editor, William Allen White, reporter and editorial writer, and
a telegrapher named Phillips. Between them they ousted the former
mayor, or rather they threw him to the landing halfway down the stairs
to the first floor. When the ex-official landed he looked up and saw Ralph
Stout in a throwing posture, holding a cuspidor and Mr. Davenport is
supposed to have cried out:

"Drop that cuspidor, Ralph Stout! Put that spittoon down!"

It was also reported that Mr. Davenport had a pistol and made a ges-
ture of using it but the testimony on that point is not conclusive. One
veteran of the Star, Charles I. Blood, who joined the staff in 1887, became
the paper's best-known city editor and still is in harness, doubts that
Davenport tried any gunplay. If he had, says Charlie Blood, he would

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 43

have been potted by Bill Campbell, stockyards reporter, who was sta-
tioned at the top of the stairs in an alcove, drawing a bead with a long-
barrelled pearl-handled six-shooter.

"The Star never loses/' Colonel Nelson informed his staff.' That
remark had a humorous sound, as it was usually uttered just after the
paper had taken a drubbing at the polls.

Defeat never discouraged the Baron, but it did put him in a rage and
filled him with a deep suspicion that he had been cheated at the polls.
This made him a remarkably efficient watchdog of the voting places and
produced a ^series of election scandals that early accustomed Kansas
Citians to the idea that their political organizations were extraordinarily
corrupt. The Star's extremely lurid and elaborate accounts of election
thievery and thuggery served the double purpose of intimidating the
politicians and discrediting them, building up a reservoir of public wrath
which the newspaper exploded at the proper time. Nelson showed the
effectiveness of this kind of crusading in memorable fashion in the county
campaigns of '92 and '94, when he warred to wrest control of the prose-
cutor's office from the Combine, which was much too tolerant of gam-
bling and vice conditions to suit the Star editor. The newspaper lost the
first round but made a tremendous scandal over the conduct of the elec-
tion, in which Scar-Faced Charley Johnson, the celebrated bunco artist,
and his troupe of traveling crooks appear to have taken a conspicuous
'part. This agitation contributed to the defeat of the Democrats two years
later and prepared the ground for a violent public outburst, which oc-
curred when the newspaper trumpeted disclosures of a crude conspiracy
to steal the offices of county prosecutor and marshal for the Democrats.
Forgeries were committed in the official returns after the unofficial count
had shown a clear victory for the Republicans. With Nelson's paper fur-
nishing the thunder and lightning, a committee of safety was organized,
mass meetings were held, lynch talk was encouraged and a large prosecu-
tion fund raised. A grand jury returned twenty-one indictments for elec-
tion frauds, twelve politicians fled town and one committed suicide. The
Jackson County men played Courthouse politics for keeps.

Baron Bill's battle with the party organizers and demagogues entered
a curious phase with his greatest single civic undertaking, which was the
building of ( Kansas City's beautiful parks and extensive boulevards* With

44 TOM'S TOWN

the politicians playing a dual role, offering both resistance and assistance
to the construction, this program eventually produced 4,025 acres of parks
and 119 miles of boulevards in a continuous system. All of it has grown
upon the foundations that Nelson and his generation built, and a large
part of it was created or projected during his lifetime. In fact, the town
had no park property whatever and no boulevards when he arrived on
the scene. Citizens were still falling from the mountains and burying
themselves in the mud and Mr. Nelson immediately saw that Herculean
measures would be required to get the town over the hill and out of the
mire. The superhuman spirit for grading, widening and paving was what
Bill Nelson had.

"Great as was the greatest of the Caesars, greatest was he as a road
builder," said a Nelson editorial. "Civilization treads established thor-
oughfares. Literature must have circulation or be impotent. Art cannot
ennoble or uplift or delight the multitude it cannot reach." The Star was
civilization, literature and art, and, by God, Mr. Nelson meant to have
a large circulation. The Caesar of modern transportation in the Middle
West served notice on the taxpayers of what was coming, in an early issue
o his paper. "The pinching economy, the picayunish policy, the miser-
able parsimony, which characterize our city government must be aban-
doned," he proclaimed. "Kansas City needs good streets, good sidewalks,
good sewers, decent public buildings, better street lights, more fire pro-
tection, a more efficient police and many other things."

The town got more streets, sidewalks, sewers and other things but it
seldom had peace again. Builder Nelson fortunately found a company
of tireless park, paving and sewer men ready and anxious to work with
him. He discovered an architectural genius when he invited a young
engineer and architect by the name of George E. Kessler (later architect
of the St. Louis World's Fair) to submit a plan for the improvement of
West Bluff. Kessler discarded all conventional ideas of landscaping as
inadequate for this project, producing a plan that adapted parks and
boulevards to the Kansas City terrain rather than attempting to make
nature conform to man's ideas of order and prettiness.

The park-and-boulevard vision rnoved August R. Meyer, a mine and
smelter fowner, to devote his life to the Nelson cause. He proved to be a
great evangelist and was surrounded by a band of vigorous disciples

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 45

recruited from various businesses and professions that naturally take a
special interest in building contracts. Pure altruism and private interest
were combined in a very effective way in this cause, as was illustrated in
the case of Nelson himself. The newspaperman engaged in extensive
real estate operations at the same time that he used his Star to inspire
civic improvements. The dramatic size of his ambition was shown when
he took twenty acres south of the city to build a massive stone house,
called Oak Hall, on a wooded hill above Brush Creek, in a region that
was supposed to have no future except for pig farming. No ' one but
Baron Bill expected that the Kansas City enterprise would ever reach
that far south. He hurried the movement his way by laying out miles of
streets, building miles of decorative stone walls and planting miles of
elm trees at his own expense. These activities entailed large investments
on which there was no prospect of early profit but Nelson did not expect
or seek to make his fortune from real estate. His aim was to create the
right setting for more happy Star subscribers and advertisers. *

Nelson and his associates encountered terrific resistance from loafers
and taxpayers who felt that the proper limits of progress had been
reached, and the result was a civic disorder that extended over many
years. Those of the people who didn't want new paving, sewers and
parks were organized by Nelson into Hammer and Padlock clubs (a
hammer for every improvement idea, a padlock on every money pocket) .
They were flailed, scourged and browbeaten by Nelson's reporters, car-
toonists and editorial writers as croakers, knockers, mossbacks and men
without any redeeming qualities. In the election campaigns and court
battles over boulevards and parks, the Star gave an awesome exhibition
of the spirit of progress and an impressive demonstration of the news-
paper's force in urban society, but still this was not quite enough to
accomplish the 'desired purpose.

During this period the party bosses had acquired considerable addi-
tional power and prdstige, and the battles over civic improvements did
much to enhance their importance, as the croakers and knockers turned
to them to oppose Nelson's schemes. Fortunately for the parks and boule-
vards, some of the influential party professionals were boosters, too. Jim
Pendergast was a notable public improvements man. More boulevards,
parks and .public buildings meant more jobs for his followers and the

46 TOM'S TOWN

Alderman was credited with being the author of that great slogan of all
up-and-coming societies: "You can't saw wood with a hammer." Another
was Mike Ross, ward boss and contractor, who set out many of the elm
trees lining the streets. Still another was Hugh J. McGowan, a leading
figure in the Combine and an agent for the Barber Asphalt Company
whose asphalt was favored by the City Council.

The keystone of the park-and-boulevard system was established with
the aid of political bosses who delivered the necessary votes for a price,
providing a majority for the charter amendment which made the exten-
sions possible. The story of that deal has been told in the Star itself in an
article written by H. J v Haskell, the present editor, and published on the
fiftieth anniversary of the newspaper. Editor Haskell related the incident
as it was told by Mr. Nelson to his associates.

Hugh McGowan called on Nelson at the height of the campaign for
the amendment.

"Colonel," he said, "you seem to feel strongly about this amendment."

"It's the biggest thing that has been before Kansas City in years," was
tte reply.

"Well, if you want it you can have it. But it will take a little money
for the workers."

**Nelson became practical for the moment," the Star article explained.
"The details were arranged and the votes were forthcoming."

This account was published fifteen years after the Colonel's death,
and doubtless reminded some Democrats that Nelson should have been
more grateful than he seemed to be to the organization boys for their
historic service in the 'cause of Kansas City expansion. It was in that
time that he began to preach with increasing vigor the gospel that the
party men should be ditched for the nonpartisan system favored by
Mr. Nelson.

, Out of this agitation grew the wedding of the Star and the Republican
Party, which eventually became such a solid union that the Democrats
ruefully observed that there was no Republican Party in Kansas City,
but only the Democratic and the Star parties. This fusion was not caused
by the fact that the G.O.P. was any Ies$ devoted to special interests,
bcpsism and spoils than the Democratic organization. It signified mostly

NORTH SIDE, SOUTH SIDE 47

that the Republican bosses had smaller powers of resistance than the
Democratic machine men.

Democrats probably will not concede that the Star's interest in non-
partisan city government had much to do with its growing favor toward
the Republican Party. They like the simpler explanation that Nelson
naturally became more Hamiltonian as his moneybags piled higher and
he found the Nonpartisan scheme was useful in promoting the Re-
publican cause. It is true, however, that his antipathy for spoils politics
was genuine and that there was always a large measure of democratic
liberalism mixed with his capitalistic philosophy. He demonstrated his
independence on notable occasions in Missouri and Kansas campaigns
and in the Bull Moose crusade with Teddy Roosevelt. If the Kansas City
Republicans were ever actually less partisan in local affairs than the
Democrats, it would seem that a large share of the credit should go to
Nelson and the Star.

One factor in the development of the long contest between the Star
and the Pendergast organization was the growth of the saloon power in
politics. Jim Pendergast's own financial stake in the liquor business was of
modest size but his political following was made up largely of men whose
main economic interest was in beer and whisky or who regarded the
saloon as an absolutely essential social institution. The brewery and
saloon combine had grown into a very rich and powerful vested interest
when William Rockhill Nelson decided to declare war on it in 1905.

The autocrat of the Star was not a prohibitionist by personal taste or
temperament. He did not start out as an agitator for the suppression of
the saloon, but turned that way when the liquor interests resisted reason-
able restraints and at the same time obstructed other Nelson projects.
This happened in 1905, when the Heim Brewery boys, the saloonkeepers
and the Democratic boss factions lined up to defeat a new charter, con-
taining provisions for better regulation of saloons along with measures
for more businesslike administration in the City Hall, which the Star
had vigorously championed. The editor read the election returns in one
of his blacker moods. He called his business manager and ordered him
to accept no more liquor or beer advertising in the Star. The business
manager, who knew just how much the publisher admired the adver-
tiser's dollar, entered an amazed protest but the painful order stood*

48 TOM'S TOWN

Agitation for the dry cause' in Kansas City thereupon took a vigorous
upward turn and grew steadily in the succeeding years. The propaganda
against saloonkeepers became so derogatory that it alarmed and saddened
Alderman Jim Pendergast.

"The saloon business is on the bum now," he commented in a news-
paper interview in 1907. "I'm going to be a farmer."

He did try hisiiand at farming but at the same time he continued suc-
cessfully to operate his saloon and his political machine. Brewers, dis-
tillers, boss men and Democrats flourished for many years thereafter
. despite the fact that they found it increasingly difficult to ignore the voice
that loudly declared: "The Star never loses."

Fifty-Fifty

STORMY PETREL

PENDERGAST politics took on new color and significance in the period
when James A. Reed roamed the platform as the Stormy Petrel of
Missouri's Democracy, during which time^he served successively as
prosecuting attorney of Jackson County for one term, mayor of Kansas
City for two terms and United States senator for eighteen years (1911-29) .
This was the period when great battles were fought over the issues of
electoral, legislative and municipal reform. Prohibition and American
isolation. Jim Reed was in the forefront of some of those struggles,
appearing variously on the sides of reform and reaction but giving a
consistently spectacular performance. No simple explanation or classifica-
tion will do for Jim. The complicated character of the politician's role in
American life and the intricacy of the political personality were demon-
strated to a remarkable degree in his case.

The range of the man is suggested by the numerous cognomens he
collected. He was, first and last, Fighting Jim, Missouri's Stormy Petrel.
For a while he was known as Woody Dell Jim, a title conferred in
recognition of his superlative efforts to capture the votes of poetic
Missourians by declaiming on the pastoral beauties of the Show Me
State in campaign time. Some of his admirers hailed him as the Greatest
Roman of Them All, finding that the conventional Noblest Roman
designation did not adequately convey the uniqueness of Jim Reed. The
Star under Nelson called him the Yankee from Iowa, a label whose ap-
propriateness became more apparent in later years when he publicly
consorted with the Republican Old Guard on two notable occasions. His

49

50 TOM'S TOWN

chief Missouri Republican critic, next to Nelson, dubbed him Bridlewise
Jim of the Pendergast stable. The national leader of his party in the
First World War, Woodrow Wilson, branded him a marplot. Probably
fifty per cent of the Missouri Democrats looked upon him as a stranger
in their midst in several campaigns. But the Pendergasts believed in
him, surrounded him with hero worship, fought for him, boomed him
for President and never publicly complained about his party irregularity
eyen when he turned against the Pendergasts themselves in the last days
of the machine.

In his old age, when he had mellowed a bit, Reed protested against
his popular reputation as a fighter, saying that his fame as a prosecutor
tended to obscure the constructive side of his career. His plaint was not
considered seriously by the Missourians, They couldn't remember a time
when Jim wasn't promoting a knockdown and dragout.

The $tory of Reed's rise to the United States senatorship was an essen-
tial part of the story of the Kansas City machine's genesis through a
decade when corrupt city and state political organizations provoked a
national revulsion, and figures like Teddy Roosevelt of New York,,
Tom Johnson of Cleveland, Golden Rule Jones of Toledo, La Follette
of Wisconsin and Joseph W. Folk of Missouri arose to give vigorous
leadership to the reform movement. Nelson of Kansas City was a large
voice in that agitation, but the Kansas City battle did not command
national attention because the Kansas City machine was having starter
trouble. Its development had been retarded by Baron Bill and several
other factors including, particularly, the peculiar factional division cre-
ated by Joe Shannon and the Rabbits.

Up to this time, Pendergast and Shannon were still only two of several
factional leaders in the Jackson County field, although they had been
rising steadily in influence for years. Notice that they were advancing
to a higher level, where their disputes for dominance overshadowed
'other party interests, was given in the series of factional battles that
revolved around Candidate Reed.

The Pendergasts began to take the lead in the factional competition
when they realized that in Reed they had dicovered a winner who could
confound all their foes. They started their forward march with him by
Successfully challenging Joe Shannon's power as the county boss. This

FIFTY-FIFTY 51

contest was made in the campaign of 1898, when Reed ran for the office
of county prosecutor. He won the nomination over Shannon's man,
showed himself to be a good vote getter in the election, and established
a record as a brilliant prosecutor. The Democratic factions met in an-
other bitter test of strength in the city campaign of 1900 and Reed again
carried the day for the Pendergast faction. After downing Shannon's
candidate for mayor in the primary, he led the Democrats to a landslide
that broke the Republican victory string in the city.

Political animosities in Kansas City had been greatly intensified by
this time, a situation which many regarded as a tribute to Reed's flash-
ing style of attack. The lash of his tongue when he was in the Senate
left welts on the hides of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, but those flail-
ings were routine affairs compared with his vitriolic attacks .on the Star
and the Kansas City Republicans in the days when he was first winning
public recognition. The force and effect of the early Reed oratory are
illustrated by the case of Jimmie Jones, a Republican mayor for two
terms, who retired from politics and left town to seek a living in more
peaceful fields after the stormy city campaign of 1900.

In the previous city campaign, Reed and Jones had come to blows as a
result of the former's disparaging remarks about the Republican mayor.
Jones, who campaigned for re-election as "the best little mayor that Kan-
sas City ever had," was handy with his fists. On one occasion he beat up
a barker at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show who happened to make a
remark which Mr. Jones deemed insulting to his wife when the Mayor
and his lady were entering the tent. He started looking for Jim Reed
after the latter had given a hilarious burlesque of the best little mayor.
The talented Democratic mimic concluded his droll performance before
an appreciative crowd with the charge that while the Mayor was being
eulogized as an exemplary character by a minister on the east side of the
city, Jimmie Jones was downtown "dead drunk." Mr. Jones caught up
.with Mr. Reed in the neighborhood of the stockyards and, according to
the Star's gleeful report of the meeting, Jones set upon his adversary and
^Reed fell like a log and lay in the gutter unconscious. 51 When he awoke,
"he was credited with uttering that famous line : "What hit me ? "

The bump on the head which Reed suffered at the hands of Mayor
Jones served merely to heighten his zeal as a crusader against Republican

52 TOM'S TOWN

oppression and Star dictation, which he brought to an end two years
. Jaten He was, of course, a reformer at this time and there was little in
the picture to suggest that he would someday be a figure in one of the
country's most notorious boss organizations.

In 1900 the Goats and Rabbits were all filled with cleanup sentiment
as a result of six long years of Republican rule in the City Hall, and
none had greater passion for a change than Jim Reed. And it did seem
that a change was overdue. Perhaps the Situation in the City Hall was
not so bad as Candidate Reed pictured it, but there was some reason for
believing that the Kansas City machine was going to be a Republican
rather than a Democratic outfit before the Stormy Petrel came along
with his reform. This development of the spoils system in the G.O.P.
had escaped the notice of the Star, which was preoccupied with its work
of calling attention to the growing boss tendency in the Democratic
Party. Reed denounced the Star as chief among the special interests
favored by the Jimmie Jones administration, or rather as the power be-
hind the Jones regime. It was one of his more vigorous prosecutions.
Whatever he lacked in evidence was more than offset by the passion and
sweep of his indictment, and the Democrats roared in the happy knowl-
edge that at last they 'had a special pleader who was a match for Baron
Bill

Reed's duel with Nelson's paper was a protracted affair which demon-
strated the durability of the Stormy Petrel more than any other single
thing. Fighting Jim eventually emerged from the conflict holding a top
position on the Stars honor roll. That reversal occurred some time after
Nelson died and was a development that is popularly .supposed to have
spoiled the Colonel's peace in heaven. Such an outcome seemed far out-
side the realm of remote possibility in the exciting years when Nelson
was directing the attack and Reed was pronouncing the Kansas City
Sta-ahr in insulting accents that left no room for forgiveness. Nelson's
editors devoted their best efforts to the task of punishing and suppressing
him. They tried to ignore him, giving him a long treatment of the Star's
"thunderous silence," but Reed continued to gain. They gave him a fierce
lambasting and lampooning and still he showed no signs of suffering
great pain. Is it any wonder that the editors were glad to make peace
with this rugged individual after Nelsoa departed?

FIFTY-FIFTY 53

It became increasingly difficult to ignore Reed after he was elected
mayor as he showed himself to be an efficient and forceful executive. His
administration listed numerous achievements in the public regulation of
utility corporations. Reed prevailed on the streetcar company to relin-
quish a 25-year franchise that had been rushed through the City Council
in the last days of the outgoing Republican regime. He got the company
to grant universal transfers, increased its valuation, induced it to rebuild
its system and pay the public eight per cent of its gross revenues. He
reduced the city lighting bill, introduced a competitive telephone system
that improved service and lowered rates, fought the paving monopoly
and cut taxes. Still the Star was not satisfied with Reed as a champion
against the interests and an opponent of the spoils system. It found
numerous causes for agitation, including a matter which it called the
Gamewell Gouge, involving a contract for a new fire alarm system. It
raised a cry over the rise of political influence in the Police Department
aad t ^!iKL9!j^ through

Democratic channels. Its greatest fire was centered on Reed in the fight
over the Metropolitan Street Car Company, the Star contending that the
corporation had received too generous treatment in the "gentleman's
agreement" that was negotiated in the Reed administration. This differ-
ence continued for years, extending into the streetcar franchise and fare
battles and the fight for a public utility commission in which the'Stor
was arrayed against powerful elements in both party organizations.

The attempt to stop Reed in this period was encouraged by certain
Democrats, notably members of the faction headed by Joe Shannon,
whose interest in reform politics grew steadily while the Goats were
growing in power with Reed. Shannon's Rabbits had a vigorous reformer
in the person of Frank P. Walsh, an idealistic and optimistic Irishman,
who combined radical agitation and practical politics in a most uncom-
mon fashion. His interesting crusade developed to the accompaniment
of his conflicts with Mr. Reed, a dispute that enlivened Democratic affairs
in Jackson Cotinty for many years before they both moved to Washing-
ton to follow their divergent lines in the party of Jefferson and Jackson.
Reed later held the national stage in his battles with Woodrow Wilson
and Franklin D. Roosevelt, over the League of Nations and the New
Deal. Walsh Ifcft Kansas City for Washington to serve as chairman o

54 TOM'S TOWN

Wilson's industrial relations commission and he later was co-chairman
of the first War Labor Board. He closed his career as a Roosevelt ap-
pointee in the chairmanship of the State Power Authority of New York.

Reed and Walsh had started up the political ladder together as friends
%nd fellow reformers, but parted early in the factional and philosophical
debates that disturbed the party. They clashed on the platform, in con-
ventions, in the public prints and in courtrooms, the conflict reaching
its dramatic climax in a famous murder trial in 1910. The feud was still
going in the twilight of their lives. In the late 1930'$, Walsh returned
to Kansas City, after a long absence, to represent the International
Ladies' Garment Workers Union in court against the Donnelly Gar-
ment Company, owned by Reed's wife, and Reed defended the com-
pany in its effort to prevent unionization of his wife's employees under
the Wagner Act. Kansas Citians were then reminded that there had
been no improvement in the feeling between the two old antagonists,
who hadn't spoken to each other for years. At one hearing in the case,
Reed turned angrily on Walsh when he interrupted a witness and Walsh
retorted drily: "Thank you for speaking to me." Reed glowered and
explained that the exchange was purely involuntary on his part.

In Jackson County, Walsh is remembered for the long list of pro-
gressive causes that ke espoused there, a program reflecting the wide
unrest and demand for change that had been provoked by the business
and political manipulations of the age of Frenzied Finance, the packing
trusts, the Standard Oil monopoly, the insurance swindles and the Wall
Street rigging. Walsh's interest in reform had its roots in a fierce hatred
of poverty and social inequality which he formed when he was a boy in
St. Louis. Of thirty boys he remembered in his neighborhood, he later
recalled that only three survived to a useful and normal manhood. He
early determined that the main issue of the day was "the material one,
the economic one." "The rights of man of this time," he declared, "are the
right to eat, the right to live decently, the right to work, the right to a com-
fortable home, die right to have children without wondering whether his
children hadr^'t better die than grow up." It didn't take him long to dis-
cover that the chief barrier to the exercise of those rights was maintained
by organized wealth's domination of the parties -which controlled the
machinery of government. In 1900 he severed all his connections as a

FIFTY-FIFTY 55

lawyer with corporation clients and enlarged his field of operations as an
agitator against the economic powers.

In the years that followed, Walsh raised the boss issue in his own party
on numerous occasions and found himself in the midst of a growing
Democratic tempest. He pressed this fight in city, county and state cam-
paigns and his allies were numerous and strong enough to make, the
antimachine movement a major action. This storm indie party had been
developing over a long period during which the Democrats enjoyed too
much success. The boss system entrenched itself in whichever pa^ty was
dominant, and the Democrats had been running things in Missouri for
thirty years. Seat of the organization was the State Capitol in Jefferson
City, and the boss group was known as the state machine, maintaining
its hold through the party committee, the convention system, the legisla-
tive power, the lobbies and other devices that had been created to concen-
trate authority, patronage and other means of control in a few hands.
The effort to break up this monopoly, and to arrest extension of the boss
system in the city, reached its peak in the first four years of the twentieth
century and had an important bearing on the factional conflict that
swirled around Jim Reed.

One of the important antimachine endeavors was the Home Rule
cause, a point of protracted disagreement between the Kansas City fac-
tions. The Home Rule agitators wanted to end state control of the police,
which had been established by the Democratic Legislature, placing the
appointive power over the police board in the hands of the governor.
Since the state administrations were Democratic, and had been regularly
for three decades, this system gave the Democrats control of a major
function of the city government regardless of changes in local adminis-
tration. Naturally, the Home Rule reform was popular with Republi-
cans, and very unpopular with many Democrats. However, it was
espoused by Frank Walsh, Joe Shannon, and other figures in the Rabbit
faction with growing fervor as it became increasingly clear that the
Pendergast faction was making gains with the state powers. Although
it was evident that both sides in this dispute were affected by selfish
parti$an or factional interests, the main fact was that the state control
arrangement was an antidemocratic system which created a strong tie
between local and state boss elements. State control of the police, excise

5 6 TOM'S TOWN

and election machinery was one of the principal means by which the
machine seized complete control o St. Louis. Kansas City had numer-
ous illustrations of the defects of this system but nothing to compare
with the St. Louis scandal, thanks in part to the nearly equal division of
the Kansas City parties and to the conflict of the Democratic factions
over the Home Rule issue.

It was the Rabbits' crusade for Home Rule that had produced the party
split in the county campaign of 1900, when Pendergast's followers voted
Republican in order to cut down the antipolice ticket which the Jackson
County Democrats had nominated. "This defeat will tend to purge the
Democratic Party," was Alderman Jim's happy comment. Joe Shannon,
the coiinty chairman, retaliated by publicly branding Jim Reed as a leader
in the revolt, returning to him a fifty dollar contribution to campaign
funds with "the recommendation that the Mayor at once institute a care-
ful investigation among his appointees and subordinates in the City Hall,
and in case one can be found who voted the Democratic ticket at said
election, that he present the fifty dollars as a reward for his fidelity to
the party which Mayor Reed publicly pretended to favor in the cam-
paign just closed."

Another minor Walsh project in the anti-boss cause was an episode
that was known as the Celebrated Cardwell Case; or the Mysterious Mr.
Brown, a political comedy that occupied the attention of the voters in
1901-02. One pamphleteer who compiled a history of this remarkable
affair declared that the question: Who is Mr. Brown? belonged in the
same category with the three classic conundrums of the ages : Who was
the Man in the Iron Mask?, Who wrote the Letters of Junius? and Who
struck Billy Patterson? It appears that the Missourians in the good old
days derived much pleasure from the Who-is-Mr. -Brown mystery and
at the same time acquired an advanced lesson in machine politics.

Frank Walsh gave a serious purpose to this farce by directing the in-
vestigation for the Honorable W. O. Cardwell, a Kansas City member
of the state Legislature, who blew the lid off the party scandal by charg-
ing in a speech that the Democratic State Committee solicited and
received contributions from corporations. Agitation along this line con-
tinued until the Secretary of the State, who was involved in the charges,
lost his temper and called the Honorable Mr. Cardv. ell a liar in a letter

FIFTY-FIFTY 57

published in the St. Louis Republic. Cardwell sued the paper for fifty-
thousand-dollar libel and Walsh, as attorney for the aggrieved politician,
took over the questioning of important party figures.

Depositions collected by Walsh quickly established that the State Com-
mittee had sought and accepted large gifts of money from railroad, trac-
tion, brewery, race-track and Kansas City stockyard interests. Further
startling disclosures were about to be made when the Mysterious Mr.
Brown appeared on the scene. He did his work for the party shortly after
Colonel James Monroe Seibert, chairmarTof the committee, had been
served a writ of attachment in St. Louis for defying a summons to give
a deposition in the case.

Mr. Brown called on Plaintiff Cardwell in Kansas "City, paid him
seventy-five hundred dollars in settlement of the libel suit while Colonel
Seibert was waiting in St. Louis to be rescued, and then disappeared. Mr.
Cardwell announced that he had been paid a "dignified sum" that satis-
fied his honor, and instructed Attorney Walsh to drop the case. All that
he could tell about the Mysterious Mr. Brown was. that he was "tall, thin
and cadaverous." Various experts in the field of deduction figured that
Mr. Brown was the law partner of Colonel William EL Phelps, chief of
the Missouri Pacific lobby at Jefferson City, but the pundits did not let
the matter drop with that simple solution. "

The agitation had angry repercussions when Walsh led a fight to break
the corporations' control of his party two years before Joseph W. Folk
brought a showdown on the issue in his race for governor. The Kansas
City disturber, armed with the Cardwell case disclosures, created a storm
in the Democratic state convention when he presented a platform resolu-
tion denouncing corporation contributions to campaign funds. Party
leaders tried to get him to pocket his resolution and let him understand
he could have the honor of being the convention chairman if he would
be reasonable. They next offered to support his resolution if he would
direct it at the Republicans. When he persisted in his course, they told
him they would flatten him under the party steamroller. Walsh rented a
hall and delivered an inflammatory attack on the bosses and their
moneyed friends. They kept their promise to run over him and his 'fol-
lowing in the convention but then lost their nerve and put his resolution
in the platform;

5 8 TOM'S TOWN

Walsh's stand against the state machine and the corporations brought
no immediate change in the organization command, but the Democratic
difference over this issue was fought out two years later, in 1904, in a
campaign that shattered party lines and produced a reform that had
lasting effects. Kansas City staged one of the interesting preliminaries in
that Missouri battle when Reed entered the race for governor. The
Shannon Democrats, Walsh and other Home Rule advocates lined up
solidly against him, raising the antimachine banner and striking their
first blow in the 1904 city campaign after Mayor Reed attempted to pick
his successor in the City Hall.

For this fracas, Mayor Reed ushered onto the stage, with Pendergast as-,
sistance, the Honorable William T. Kemper, who was later to make
history as the Uncle Bill of Kansas City finance. Kemper served as police
commissioner in the Reed administration and cooked up a fifty-fitty pro-
position with the Mayor: Reed agreed to help Kemper in his ambition to
be mayor in return for support for the Reed gubernatorial aspirations.
While negotiations with Alderman Jim Pendergast were still being
worked out, Kemper resigned his police commissionership and an-
nounced his candidacy for mayor. Such amateurishness appalled the
North Side leader and he remarked: "They have buncoed him. They've
made him give up his gun, disarmed him out on the prairie." Alderman
Jim threatened for a time to throw his support to Kemper's rival, George
M. Shefley, a former mayor who was trying to make a comeback with
the Rabbit leader, but this was simply a Pendergast deceptive play, and
eventually he backed the Reed choice.

In the fight that followed, Joe Shannon had the large assistance of
Editor Nelson, who was interested in the Democratic factional dispute
not only because it improved Republican chances but because it gave the
Star an opportunity to arouse public sentiment against the abuse of the
police power in politics. That power was used forcefully and effectively
for Kemper in the primary election of delegations to the Democratic city
convention which eliminated Shannon's candidate George M. Shelley.

The Star's report on the election was filled with charges that police con-
trol of the polls and intimidation of voters had produced a fraudulent
victory for Pendergast's candidate, and the agitation continued until
Shannon and his allies decided to hold a rump convention. They aomi-

FIFTY-FIFTY 59

nated Shelley as the mayoralty candidate of the "antipolice ticket,"
spreading consternation among the Goats and creating a sensation for
the whole town.

This last reaction was provoked by an incident in the noon-hour in-
terval when the rival conventions recessed for lunch. It started when
Martin Crowe, sergeant-at-arms of the Kemper convention, took a stroll
past the hall at Twelfth and Walnut streets where the Shelley convention
was being held. Up to this moment there had been a universal feeling that
no harm would ever come to Martin Crowe. He was the champion ham-
mer thrower of Kansas City, a title he won regularly at Irish picnics. Not
long before this, he had beaten up several railroaders in Cronin's saloon.
At a dance in Casino Hall he had knocked out a half-dozen men. The
only individual with enough foolhardiness to tackle Martin alone was a
mountainous Swede teamster, who had been thrashed and then picked
up bodily 'and tossed into his wagon. So Mr. Crowe expected no interfer-
ence when he took his walk past the assembled Rabbits. He was, however,
accosted by one Cas Welch, a sturdy Shannon lieutenant with a deputy
marshal's badge. Deputy Welch reproached Sergeant Crowe over his
conduct in the recent primary, and his protest was heartfelt because
Martin was an old friend and until a year or so earlier had been a fellow
member of the Rabbit faction. He deserted to the Goat side after Tom
Pendergast became county marshal and gave him the contract for supply-
ing bread to prisoners in the county jail. Gas's sorrow over the corruption
o his former friend caused him to make his remonstrance more spirited
than was healthful and he was immediately knocked down. Welch drew
a pistol and fired three times, striking Crowe twice, once in the rump
and once in the heel, for the great Martin had turned to run.

"It was just a friendly argument," Cas Welch told the police when they
arrived. "I felt friendly again the minute I fired that third shot."

The combined effect of Cas Welch, Shannon, Shelley, Walsh and the
Star was too much for Kemper, Pendergast and Reed, and the final deci-
sion went to the Republicans. It left the Democrats still quarreling, and
nursing wounds that were long in healing. The same forces that figured
in the Kansas City factional storm entered into the larger Missouri
struggle that reached its conclusion in the summer and fall of 1904. In
the primary. race for governor, -Reed encountered some of his stiffest

60 TOM'S TOWN

resistance in his own bailiwick and his defeat was conceded long before
the last round. Joe Shannon's uprising was not, however, the main factor
in sidetracking Candidate Reed. Kansas City's recently retired mayor
simply had picked a poor time to run for governor on his reform record.

The spirit of reform was in the air but the spotlight was held by Joseph
Wingate Folk of St. Louis as a result of his work in breaking up the St.
Louis aldermanic combine and conducting prosecutions against im-
portant individuals in the business and political life of Missouri's largest
city. Operations of the gang, which Folk uncovered in 1901-02 when he
was serving as circuit attorney, made "boodling" the great term of the
day. The Disgrace of St. Louis startled even the muckrackers of the pe-
riod. (See Lincoln Steflfens' Autobiography and The Shame of the
Cities?) As the St. Louis grand jury pointed out in its final report, "al-
though there may have been corruption in other cities as great as we
have had here, yet in no place in the world and in no time known to
history has so much official corruption been uncovered and.the evidence
shown so that all could see and understand." ,

Among the interesting exhibits uncovered was a fantastic oath for
aldermen in the secret combine serving the transportation, utilities and
garbage disposal monopolies. It read:

I do solemnly agree that in case I should reveal the fact that any person in
this combine has received money for illegal purposes, I hereby permit and
authorize other members of this combine to take the forfeit of my life in such
manner as they may deem proper, and that my throat may be cut, my tongue
torn out and my body cast in the Missouri River.

The investigation reached high up, trapping several millionaire busi-
nessmen-politicians, including one who fled to France, another who fled
to Mexico and two who were saved from prison when the Missouri Su-
preme Court reversed their sentences. Seven boodlers were sent to prison
and the St. Louis scandal was combined wi|h an exposure of legislative
bribers at the state capital; the attorney general and a grand jury at Jeffer-
son City working with Folk and the St Louis probers.

Folk was the man of the hour and he signified that he was willing to
accept the governor's office to continue his cleanup. His challenge met
considerable opposition from party regulars and conservatives,- particu-
larly in the cities, qutstate Missouri rallied heavily to Folk's side. His two

FIFTY-FIFTY 61

opponents were overwhelmed in the pre-convention 'primary and he was
nominated on the first ballot at a convention which wrote many of his
progressive ideas into the party platform. Reed had withdrawn from the
race two'months before the convention and his defeat was underscored
by the loss of his home county. Shannon and Walsh had climbed on the
Folk bandwagon early and were large factors in the Jackson County
movement for the S.t. Louis prosecutor. One of the principal journalistic
voices in the Folk revolt was Colonel Nelson's. His Star carried on a
vigorous fight for the Democratic Scourge of the Rascals in the nominat-
ing campaign and supported him against the Republican candidate for
governor in the final election, at the same time plugging for the national
Republican ticket headed by Teddy Roosevelt, the Trust Buster.

Missouri elected Folk and returned a Democratic majority to the upper
house of the Legislature, but otherwise moved into the Republican
column, giving its electoral votes to the G.O.P. presidential candidate
for the first time since Reconstruction. The Mysterious Stranger, as Mis-
souri was labeled in a famous post-election cartoon by McCutcheon, was
starting on a long rampage in politics.

Hope that the progressive movement would prevail over the old cor-
rupt system soared high in the Folk administration. It was in this period
that Missouri adopted the direct primary law and the initiative and refer-
endum. A rigid antilobby law, a child labor law, provision for the re-
moval of derelict public officials, a compulsory education law, an
eight-hour law for some industries, pure food regulations and a public
utility commission for cities were some of the other important reforms
introduced under Folk. The Democratic governor was not the only
conspicuous figure in the high tide of progressivism in Missouri. Kansas
City produced one of the main actors, Herbert S. Hadley, later governor
of the state, who was elected attorney general on the Republican ticket
in the Mysterious Stranger year of 1904.

Hadley, a Kansan, a Jayhawker by birtrl and education, started his
political rise as an assistant city counselor of Kansas City and prosecutor
of Jackson County, exhibiting uncommon zeal in the fight on lawbreak-
ers and political tricksters. As attorney general of Missouri he drew
the national spotlight with the antitrust proceedings he instituted against
the Standard Oil Company and was credited with- paving the way for the

62 TOM'S TOWN

Federal action which broke up the greatest monopoly then existing in
America. The oil interests were fined and ousted from the state by the
Supreme Court, being permitted to return, later, on payment of fines and
with pledges to discontinue their illegal business methods. The Attorney
General also warred against the harvester trust, the insurance and lumber
trusts and the railroads, but these actions were still uncompleted when he
ended ,his term in office.

Elaborate efforts to improve the morals and the social habits of the
people in the cities were combined with the action to restrain predatory
business interests. Race tracks were closed down under a new law enacted
in the Folk administration. Dramshop laws were so rigidly enforced in
St. Louis, Kansas City and St. Joseph that many saloons shut their doors
permanently and dry Sundays came to the parched city dwellers. This
kind of crusading earned Folk the nickname of Holy Joe and eventually
created an unfortunate complication in the Missouri reform, with the old
quarrel over boozing and gaming overshadowing more important aspects
of the uplift. Folk protested that he was not a dry fanatic, and his
efforts to restrain the liquor interests could have been defended on prac-
tical political grounds, as well as on loftier premises, for the boss organiza-
tion against which he was contending was entrenched in the saloons.
However, the sportive citizens were not yet prepared to sacrifice their
loose social customs in order to get rid of corrupt politicians, and Holy
Joe found himself identified with repression rather than progress by a
large segment of the public in the urban centers.

It appears that Folk may have contributed further to the shortening
c$ his political life by his determined effort to take the police out of
politics and reduce election frauds. Police and election commissioners
appointed by him were credited with effecting some improvement, but
this was not alone enough to change the results in many of the old boss-
controlled wards of the city. At the same time, it brought on Folk the
enmity of powerful individuals and groups in his own party.

The boss system weathered the storm, and the return to power of the
old order was forecast even before the Folk administration ended. While
the business interests attacked the new reform laws in the courts, and
succeeded in killing some of the measures regulating business, the regu*
lars staged a comeback in the party organization and at the polls.

FIFTY-FIFTY" 63

In 1908, Missouri used for the first time the direct primary law that
had been enacted in the Folk administration and was regarded by the
insurgents as one of their chief weapons against the bosses, who had so
long held power through the convention system. Ironically, the prin-,
cipal architect of this reform was himself eliminated in the 1908 primary
by Senator William Joel Stone, who had the backing of the Kansas City
and St. Louis organizations. Folk ran for the senatorial nomination that
year because Missouri governors constitutionally are prohibited from
directly succeeding themselves. While he was going down to defeat, he
saw the party regulars score another important triumph in the governor-
ship race with the nomination of a veteran organization man from
Kansas City, William S. Cowherd, former mayor and a member of the
national House of Representatives who had been unseated in the 1904
upheaval. His Republican opponent in the November election was
Kansas City's Herbert S. Hadley, who ran on the Folk-Hadley reform
record, was elected and kept the progressive movement alive a little
longer.

The organization showed that it had completely recovered two years
later when Jim Reed made his successful campaign for a seat in the
United States Senate. Reed was favored that year by both fate and the
political trend. He got the jump on rivals for the senatorial nomination
by stealing the limelight in a murder trial that held national -attention
for six weeks just before the campaign opened. The rivalry of Reed and
Frank Walsh reached a melodramatic high point in this case, which had
its origin in Independence, Harry Truman's home town. The trial, which
was held in Kansas City, has found a place among the classic American
murder cases.

As a trial lawyer, Walsh was destined to win national fame and among
his notable later victories was his successful" fight to win a pardon for
Tom Mooney, the labor agitator who was condemned in the San
Francisco Preparedness Parade bombing. But in Jackson County Walsh
and Reed were recognized as two equally matched giants of the bar, when
they met in 1910. Reed, as county prosecutor, had won all except two
of the 287 cases he had tried, and it was remembered that Walsh was
his successful opponent in one of those two actions. That earlier trial
had attracted wide attention as the.deendant was Jesse James, Jr., son of

64 TOM'S TOWN

the immortal train robber, who was accused of attempting to carry on
the family tradition in the hold-up of a Missouri Pacific train near
Kansas City in 1898. Young Jesse was acquitted, later became a lawyer
and practised for a time in Kansas City, took a fling in Democratic poli-
tics and attracted brief attention as an insurgent agitating for the over-
throw of "King Tom" Pendergast. The courtroom drama provided by
Walsh and Reed was exciting enough to inspire him in that choice of
a career, but their clash in the James trial was a small skirmish beside
their engagement of 1910 in the Swope case.

Reed's histrionic talent was given full play in the prosecution of Dr.
B. Clark Hyde, charged with the murder of Colonel Thomas H. Swope,
millionaire real estate owner and philanthropist who gave Kansas City
the i,323-acre park that bears his name. Hyde, husband of one of Swope's
nieces, also was accused of doing away with two of Swope's heirs and
attempting to kill several others. A highly theoretical and circumstantial
case was built on the contention that the defendant, a reputable and
widely known physician before the trial:, had turned into a monster in an
effort to enhance his wife's share of Swope's four-million-dollar fortune.
Jim Reed was hired as the special prosecutor by Dr. Hyde's mother-in-
law, who had opposed the doctor's marriage to her daughter, Frances
Hunton Swope. For four years she had nursed a morbid fear that her
unwanted son-in-law was after the Swope millions which she was guard-
ing for her numerous children, and then a run of death and sickness in
the family turned her suspicions into certainty. However, she could not
convince her daughter, and Frances Swope Hyde went before the court
to brand the whole case against her husband as a fabrication based on
prejudice, distortions, .unfounded suspicions, malicious gossip and excited
imaginations.

The things that Special Prosecutor Reed did with this fantastic com-
plication made the undoing of Clark Hyde a Reed show. Memories of
Reed swaying the jury to convict the doctor were still vivid twenty years
later, when a veteran Starman was inspired to add this tasty bit to the
book of journalistic hyperbole :

"Jim Reed reached for the stars in that speech. He found pathways in
the clouds never before trodden in criminal cases. He finessed with
meteors which dropped headlong into the path along which his feet took

FIFTY-FIFTY 6*

him. That golden voice could be as plaintive as a lute or as bold as thunder
ringing from mountain peaks."

That reminiscence was in the flamboyant style of Reed himself and
scrutiny of the court record shows several passages in which he soared
nearly as high as the author quoted above. He was terrific, no doubt about
it, and the special prosecution served as a revealing introduction to the
Stormy Petrel when he stepped on the national stage to give the Kansas
City Goats a loud voice in the American hurly-burly.

Curiously, the question of Clark Hyde's guilt or iijtnocence has never
been entirely settled, despite the Reed eloquence. Three juries in all heard
the evidence in the case. The first voted eight to four for acquittal on the
first ballot, but there was one powerful pleader in the minority who won
the eight over to a conviction after three nights and two days of delibera-
tion. That verdict was upset by the Missouri Supreme Court, which re-
manded the case for a new trial, and the second round ended in a mistrial
when one of the jurors suffered a nervous breakdown and escaped from
the jury room. The third trial ended in a deadlock, with the jury reported-
standing nine to three for acquittal, and the state finally drppped the case
seven years after the first trial. x

There is ample room for doubt that Reed would have obtained even a
disputed conviction if the trial judge in the case had not permitted the
prosecution to proceed on the broad theoretical course which the state
Supreme Court condemned, and erred in several other important respects,
thpt were discussed in the stunning reversal. Finally, the Supreme
Court declared that it was likely that Colonel Swopc died from the
effects pf senile debility, in his eighty-second year, on the basis of the
evidence developed at the trial.

So the story ought to show that Frank Walsh won his most spectacular
engagement with Jim Reed, taking the decision on the points of law
and evidence, but the course of justice, like the play of fortune in poli-
tics, is often confused and sad. Dr. Hyde found that the public did not
digest or remember the sober opinion of the Supreme Court, and the
legend that was formed in the melodrama and bombast of the six weeks*
trial became fixed in the popular mind. He retired to spend the re-
mainder of his life under a doud. Reed went directly from the court*

66 TOM'S TOWN

room to campaign for the Senate seat and he had won that race before the
Supreme Court's decision against the special prosecution was returned.

An impressive demonstration of Democratic harmony was given when
Reed was sent to Washington. At that time, the election of United States
senators was still held in the Legislature, after nominations in the prefer-
ential primary. Not a single dissentii}g Democratic vote was registered
in the legislature when the Kansas City candidate was chosen. The
time for revolts in the Democratic Party of Missouri was over, and there
would be no great disturbance for another quarter of a century.

Through the storms of the last decade the Pendergast faction had
proved its strength and it was resuming the expansion that had been
interrupted by the varied interference from Walsh, Shannon, Folk and
Nelson. Tom Pendergast had taken over full command of the faction
from Alderman Jim in the same year that Reed ran successfully for the
Senate. Big Tom and Fighting Jim had become fast friends in the strug-
gles of the last dozen years, and they were to stand together in larger
actions in the* city, state and national arenas. The trend for the Demo-
crats of Kansas City, and particularly for the Pendergast organization,
was up from here on.

' A turning point had been marked in 1900 when Reed appeared on the
.scene as mayor. It ended six straight years of Republican successes. It was
followed by four decades in which the Republicans counted only ten
years in control of the City Hall, and about the same number in the
Courthouse. Joe Shannon, the Rabbit leader, had succeeded in strength-
ening his position and restoring the balance between the Democratic
factions through the disturbances of the reform period, but the road
.ahead for Shannon was rocky. His ally, Fr^nk Walsh, soon would leave
Kansas City and other figures who had assisted him in the political com-
petition were about to pass on. Mr. Shannon wasn't going to have much
time for rest despite the fact that peace had been restored to the Jackson
County, Democracy under Fifty-Fifty, the historic trading agreement
betweeg the Goats and Rabbits which had been devised during a lull in
the battles of the last decade. It wasn't the poet's kind of peace.

Although Reed in Washington placed himself above the rough-and-
tumble in which the city machine grew big and tough, his relationship
with Tom Pendergast remained unbrokea until near the close of the

FIFTY-FIFTY 67

boss show. The Senator did not control much patronage that was useful
to the Kansas City Democrats, but the prestige of his position, the power
of his voice in campaigns, his advice on policy and strategy and his influ-
ence with state and national party leaders were large assets to the organ-
ization out of which the machine grew. It took fifteen more years to
complete that Development, but the building process began to attract
major attention not long after the Missouri reform ended.

\
REFORM IN OLD TOWN

MURDER, economic injustice and political corruption were much less inter-
esting to the general public as daily propositions than the problem of ordi-
nary vice and it seemed that a large part of the population believed that if
men could be induced to give up guzzling, dancing, whoring and card
playing all would be well with the Republic and such matters as good
government and social right would more, or less take care of themselves.

The hard-shell Baptist idea in political endeavor had a very interest-
ing subject to work on in Kansas City's First Ward, which included old
Market Square and extended south to Twelfth Street all of it a notable
center of resistance to the puritan philosophy. Twelfth Street, with its
new White Way, its hotels, restaurants and theaters, carried the spirit o
old Battle Row and Union Avenue into the new metropolitan age.

Holy Joe Folk's crusading against tipplers, horse players and dice ex-
perts had a temporarily depressing effect on this lively neighborhood
and revived the North Side's fanatical opposition to reform and reformers
of all kinds. When Folk passed from the scene at the end of his one term >
his Republican successor, the Honorable- Herbert S. Hadley, endeavored
to carry on the good work of improving the moral tone of the cities, as
the Protestant devil chasers Were still making a great commotion with
their notion that an enormous uplift would be derived from a vast shut-
down in public merriment. Moreover, it appeared that the G.O.P, would
be strengthened by a little practical reform under the auspices of Repub-
lican officials and policemen, at the expense of Democratic saloonkeepers
and dive operators. The result was a most earnest application of the cle.an-
up principle in Old Town, producing a reaction which showed that the

$8 TOM'S TOWN

vice problem required something more than the simple political action
favored by the reformers of this period.

For this great work, Governor Hadley selected a Republican lawyer
by the name of Tom Marks, a sportsman, social philosopher and swash-
buckling fellow with ambitions to displace the Pendergasts as the power
in the First Ward. Naturally he centered his improvement project in that
district. Much work needed to be done both for the Republican cause
and for salvation in the North End, as the North Side then was called.
With the city's rapid march southward, the original part of the com-
munity in and around Market Square had become a seedy relic of a pic-
turesque past. Sentimentalists called it Old Town and regarded it with
affection, but the people in the higher-rent districts to the northeast and
south looked upon it with distaste or tried not to see it. They entered it
by day only when they had business that took them to the City Hall, the
Courthouse or some commercial establishment. They saw it at night
when they were making the rounds or going to and from theaters, in the
neighborhood, which held out against the decline. They knew it vaguely
as the part of town in which Negroes and Italians were crowded with
Jews, Irish and native Americans at the bottom of the social and economic
heap, the area in which the bawdyhouses operated and the underworld
had its roots.

Police Commissioner Marks set about the cleanup task with com-
mendable ,zeal but before long it appeared that he was too advanced for
the town. A reformer of the sophisticated type produced by the new
metropolitan age, he felt that the old-fashioned raiding-and-closing tactics
of the Folk pferiod were inadequate to deal with the modern pace in
larceny, homicide and forbidden joy, but he found that rn^ny horse-and-
buggy ideas in public morals persisted when he attempted to introduce
jeforms that had a rather Parisian flavor*

Mr. Marks produced a blast of righteousr indignation from holders of
various profitable downtown properties by drawing plans for a segre-
gated vice district in the North End. This proposal was based on a for-
eign doctrine of compromise with Beelzebub which was ever hateful to
the native Baptists and Methodists* Furthermore, the plan threatened to
jeopardize important real estate values and restrain trade. The North
End had a large daytime industrial and commercial importance as weE

FIFTY-FIFTY 69

as an interesting nighttime traffic. It had its own way of accommodating
itself to the social evil, so that neither the daytime nor the nighttime busi-
ness suffered, and it did not propose to change.

"There must be some regulation," Mr. Marks declared. e< Vice cannot
be suppressed and it cannot be scattered like measles along our boule*
vards. So we must reduce the evil to the minimum."

His radical scheme to achieve this end with a police-sponsored red -light
district was shouted down at a meeting of two hundred angry business-
men who were not idealists like Tom Marks and didn't believe there
was any such thing as a minimum in sin. It was the consensus of the
meeting that Mr. Marks had been absolutely insulting to the respectable
property owners with his broad insinuations that they were responsible
for the existing social conditions, and they adjourned after adopting a
resolution formally changing the name of the North End to the North
Side, which was thought to have a less unsavory sound. The problem was
left approximately where it was, 'until it was dealt with a little later in
more orthodox American fashion through a tremendous revival directed
by the Religion Forward Movement with the earnest co-operation of the
businessmen. That was declared to be a wonderful campaign and its good
results were summed up by the head of the Movement, who said: "The
present social evil is indeed a long-time problem. I have no doubt but
what a speedy solution will be arrived at. Just what that is will be hard to
prophesy."

The speedy solution was still hard to guess when the Marks cleanup
ended after a run that was made brief by the usual complications attend-
ing partisan administration of the Police Department.

The chief political result of this Republican concern over Old Town's
morals was to increase the North Side's" affection for Democrats. Al-
though they were roundly abused as the men most responsible for condi-
tions, the political heroes of the saloonkeepers were models of sobriety
and encouraged uplift in their own quiet way. Joe Shannon, the Rabbit
boss, for example, had a record as a teetotaler which few wearers of the
white ribbon could match. *

Joe delighted in telling the story of his success in resisting temptation
in any alcoholic form. It began when he was a boy of twelve and had to
quit school to help support his widowed mother and her large family.

70 TOM'S TOWN

Joe's first job was in Martin Keek's beer garden atop an eminence later
known as Union Station Hill, later the site of Kansas City's imposing
First World War Memorial. When Mrs. Shannon learned that her son
was working in a beer joint, she gave him a long lecture on the evils of
drink.

"Promise me that you will never touch whisky or beer or any of those
things with alcohol in them/* she said: "The devil's in them."

"I promise, Ma," said little Joe.

"And I never have," concluded the Rabbit chieftain, draining a glass
of milk with a show of vast relish.

The Pendergasts, who depended on the saloon for their main income,
could not go so far as the Shannons in discouraging interest in liquor, but
old Jim did what he could to impress the temperance people. He gave up
drinking fairly early in his career after he underestimated his own
strength in a friendly brawl with another Irishman, when both he and
the other man were artificially stimulated. As befitted a naturally peace-
loving man, Jim suffered profound remorse over his friend's abrasions
and contusions and thereafter he passed when the drinks were ordered.
He began to develop a reformer's zeal, eventually establishing some kind
of a record in hoisting the young to the driver's seat of the water wagon.
One of the prized documents in the safe in his saloon was a list of the
men whom he had forced to take the pledge. The list contained nearly a
hundred names of citizens who had been corralled by Jim Pendergast
in the company -of John Barleycorn and rushed in a hack to a Catholic
church, where they were sweated by the saloonkeeper and the priest until
they signed the pledge. Pendergast stored these papers in his safe after
solemnly warning the signers that if they broke their promise they would
lose the frienship of Jim Pendergast. It was no light threat and it
worked in a reasonable number of cases. Several men who later became
important figures in Democratic affairs owed their start on the straight-
and-narrow way to the saloonkeeper of Old Town.

Tom Pendergast had a normal liking for the taste and effect of bourbon
but he, too, eventually became one of the abstinence men although he
never tried to pose as a temperance model like Shannon or compete with
evangelists like Jim.

AJderman Jim carried his temperance ideas into his political work to

FIFTY-FIFTY 71

the extent of refusing to do anything for any member of the police force
who was dropped for intoxication while on duty. By personal example
and disciplining of his political following, he sought to inculcate the
good saloonkeeper's creed that liquor was something to be enjoyed and.
not abused, and reform was an individual problem. At the same time that
he encouraged saloonkeepers and their patrons to conduct themselves
with moderation, he used all of his influence to fight their battles. He fol-
lowed this line in all of his operations on the North Side.

Pendergast's attitude on the liquor question was based on practical
business and political considerations, of course, but it also was possible
to see in it the honest conviction of a man who accepted things as they
were and tried, with the limited means at his disposal, to make them
bearable. There is no doubt that he had a great sentimental attachment
for the North Side and its people. To him the inhabitants of the slums^
the floaters in the flophouses, the shanty dwellers of the East Bottoms,
the laboring men in the West Bottoms and the people of Little Italy were
not the teeming masses so luridly described in the literature of the period
as the flotsam and jetsam of society. They were personal friends of Alder-
man Jim Pendergast. He liked to listen to their stories and took a genuine
interest in their problems. He got them jobs on the city or county pay-
rolls or with business friends of the organization.

The North Side people who lived daily with want and insecurity
naturally could make more sense out of Alderman Jim's measures to
assist them than they could from the arguments of the agitators who
wanted to make over America and change everybody's habits. The North
Siders went to Pendergast for more than jobs. They went to him when
they were in trouble and needed someone to soften the stern hand of
justice. Many of them got fuel and other supplies from his precinct cap-
tains when they were down and out. Others ate his turkey and trimmings
at the free Christmas dinners which he gave for the Old Town derelicts,
beginning with fifty guests and growing into the hundreds as the num-
ber of drifters increased year after year.

These people remembered Alderman Jim as the hero of the 1903 flood
that inundated a part of the North Side and made hundreds homeless.
Jim lived in his buggy, day and night, traveling over the scene directing
rescue work and the temporary housing and feeding of the refugees.

72 TOM'S TOWN

Afterward he took the lead in the movement to rehabilitate the North
Side. The agitators and reformers might some day make it possible to re-
make Old Town but while the millennium was being prepared the first
Coat boss served as an efficient sort of practical humanitarian.

Alderman Jim's hold on,the North Side reached its high point at the
same time that the fights on the saloon and the boss system entered
their major phase. Making his ninth and last race for alderman in 1908,
Jim rolled up his largest majority, 1,330 to 443, and had the pleasure of
seeing a Democratic administration returned to power in the City Hall.

By 1910, Jim Pendergast was failing in health and ready to retire, al-
though he was only fifty-four years old. He looked forward to a serene
period in which his brothers would take care of the saloon and political ,
interests of the family while he devoted his attention to chicken raising
on his farm. "No mixed breeds for me," he said.

All angles of the prospect were pleasing. The organization was at its
peak and Brother Tom, then thirty-seven and fully seasoned for his work
,as boss, was taking over the Pendergast aldermanic seat from the First
Ward.

"Brother Tom will make a fine alderman, and hell be good to the boys
just as I have been," Jim remarked to a group of cronies in his saloon.
"Eighteen years of thankless work for the city; eighteen years of abuse,
eighteen years of getting jobs for the push is all the honor I want."

He died a year and a half later. )

On the base of Pendergast's statue in Mulkey Square this inscription
was placed:

This monument is erected by general contribution as a tribute to the rugged
-character and splendid achievements of a man whose private and public life
was the embodiment of truth and courage.

A more flowery statement was written in a second bronze tablet on
the base of the monument but perhaps the sincerest tribute came from
Colonel Nelson's paper, which said:

"Alderman Pendergast had a code of ethics all his own. He never failed
to take political advantage of an opponent. But he regarded a political
promise as binding and never broke his word. He hated an ingrate. In-
gratitude in his mind was an unforgivable sin.

"His support of any man or measure never had a price in cash."

FIFTY-FIFTY 73

WHOSE TOWN ?

THE ENEMIES of Colonel Nelson had to wait until two years before his
death before they got a chance to see him humiliated in a way that seemed
adequate to their profound sense of grievance. They had almost given up
hope that retribution would overtake the Baron when a sensitive Circuit
judge turned a divorce case into a cause ctlcbre, declaring that Nelson's
Star was guilty of contempt in reporting the domestic difficulty and rul-
ing that the judicial dignity would be satisfied only when Baron Bill was
behind jail bars.

For years the Colonel had been guilty of a very low opinion of numer-
ous judges and on the subject of lawyers he was generally full of con-
tempt. Lawyers had shaped the laws of the land, packed the courts and
conducted their business in a manner that made justice a commodity re-
served for the highest bidder, as the Daily W. R. Nelson said often and
in various effective ways. Lawyers were the fixers for corporations and
manipulators of the political machine. In the Star's language the lawyers
were, with few exceptions, fee grabbers.

Nelson's reporters and editors usually aimed their shots well, but they
fired so many salvos in so many directions at once that it was only natural
that they should wound a bear now and then, with the familiar conse-
quences to the luckless gunner. One notable instance was when a Kansas
City lawyer who was a former member of the Missouri Legislature col-
lected fifteen thousand dollars for libel on two innocent-looking words.
He demanded redress after the Star carried a story reviewing his career
and reporting that he "did well" in a legislative way. This legal fellow
refused to regard doing well as a fair estimate of his efforts, but instead
considered the phrase a scandalous imputation of political boodling ex-
pressed in a familiar Missouri language, and he found a court that agreed
with his interpretation.

A more famous example of reportorial embarrassment was given in the
contempt issue raised by Circuit Judge Joseph A. Guthrie early in 1913.
The Judge was elected to the Circuit bench of Jackson County in 1910
with the backing of the PendergJasts. He brooded for a long time over the
Star's attitude toward his profession and it is conceivable that he was

74 TOM'S TOWN

unable to get the Star's policy out of his mind when he considered the
question of whether Colonel Nelson ought to go to jail.

The case grew out of the divorce action of Clevinger v* Clevinger, a
quarrelsome couple who set the stage for an incident that drew national
attention when they decided not to go through with dissolution of the
matrimonial ties. Mrs. Clevinger asked that her suit for divorce be dis-
missed and her three lawyers requested the Court to order that her hus-
band pay her attorney's fees, the total amount involved being sixty
dollars. The Court so ordered, following well-established precedent in
the matter. His Honor hit the ceiling of his chamber when he read the
Star's account of this routine affair, for the newspaper story was thor-
oughly garbled and unfavorable to the Judge. In brief, the story and head-
line created the impression that the Court had subordinated the client's
interest to the lawyers', holding that fees must be paid before alimony
was allowed, and that he had awarded sixty dollars each to three lawyers
in a divorce suit which never came to trial.

" *ph.e Judge decided on drastic reprisals, and he didn't need the encour-
agement which he found in Democratic circles, for he was explosive
spontaneously. However, some of the leaders of his own party were dis-
turbed by the impetuousness with which he went about the business of
humbling the great man on the Star. One of his judicial colleagues and .
fellow Democrat, Judge Ralph S. Latshaw, criticized him publicly.

"This is the greatest outrage ever perpetrated by a court of justice," said
Judge Latshaw. "It's a case of putting away Caesar that Rome might have
a holiday." /

Goats and Rabbits, nourished for years on Star hating, crowded^into
Judge Guthrie's court to witness the spectacle of Colonel Nelson being
clapped in the calaboose. The proceedings before Judge Gythrie were
brief and the defense's efforts to introduce certain evidence were brushed
aside. Joe Guthrie had made up his mind as to the defendant's guilt and
his punishment one day in jail.

But the sentencing of Colonel Nelson didn't turn out to be the circus
that the enemies of the editor expected to see. The Star's official biography
of Nelson carries this awed report of his effect on the assembled lawyers,
sheriff's deputies, spectators and apparently everyone except Judge
<Jutnrie:

FIFTY-FIFTY 75

"Those who were in the courtroom that day will never forget the scene;
the noble dignity 6f the white-haired man, while about him shuffled and
whispered and leered the crowd of political creatures, and he the only
calm, unruffled, unexcited one amid it all. The political rabble that day
was given to glimpse the strength of character of a great man, and it
awed them, absolutely awed. Then they began to sense the wrong they
were doing, and it shamed them. When the proceedings were over, even
the judge, on the bench saw that his crowd had slunk away from him."

The thing that actually impressed the Judge and disappointed the leer-
ing crowd was the quick work of Frank P. Walsh, one of the Democratic
lawyers engaged to defend the Colonel. Mr. Walsh noticed the Judge
reading from a paper when he began to deliver his decision. He respect-
fully interrupted the Court, asked if he was reading his opinion. Upon
being informed that such was the case, he asked when the decision was
written and was advised that it had been prepared the night before the
hearing. The official court record contains this colloquy:

Mr. Walsh: I think the record ought to show that your honor had his de-
cision in this case written before the hearing began, if that be a fact.

Judge Guthrie: That is the fact.

Mr. Walsh: Then let the record show that at the conclusion of the arguments
the judge of this honorable court read his decision, which was prepared in
advance.

Judge Guthrie: The decision was in the breast of this court and it was as easy
for this court to prepare its opinion at one time as another.

Mr. Walsh: Then it was prepared before this hearing.

Judge Guthrie: Yes.

The Judge was not only in an excessive hurry to prepare and deliver his
opinion against Nelson; he also was impatient to see Colonel Nelson
in the hands of the sheriff and on the way to jail. He insisted that the
editor be not allowed to loiter in the courtroom while his attorneys' hastily
prepared application for a writ of habeas corpus to spare him the in-
dignity of being seized by the sheriff and hauled off before the riffraff.
Mr, Walsh asked for only ten minutes for his distinguished client but
Guthrie said the case was closed and called for the sheriff to do his duty.

The courtroom crowd grew impatient, raising a shout: "What are they
waiting for?" But Lawyer Walsh was an expert at stalling and he was

76 TOM'S TOWN

killing time with a purpose. He and another Democratic lawyer, James
P. Aylward, had prepared for this eventuality. In a room on the floor
above Judge Guthrie f s court, a j udge of the Kansas City Court of Appeals
had been posted to go in session the moment that word was flashed. The
signal was given when Nelson was sentenced, and while Walsh pleaded
for time from Guthrie, his associate obtained from the Appellate Court a
temporary writ of habeas corpus. That instrument finally was served in
time to permit Nelson's release before he actually suffered formal arrest
and imprisonment.

The Court of Appeals quickly decided it did not have jurisdiction in
the case and passed the difficult question on to the Supreme Court of
Missouri. Meanwhile the newspapers of the nation took up the cudgels
for Nelson, raising a great clamor over the manner in which Guthrie was
attempting to railroad the Kansas City publisher to jail, and hailing the
Colonel as one of the immortals in the ancient battle for freedom of the
press.

Three months later the Supreme Court delivered its opinion, a master-
piece of legal logic, philosophical wisdom and political sagacity. In an
exhaustive report prepared by Judge Woodson and concurred in by all
other members of the bench, the Court found that the Star was guilty of
contempt, as charged, and freed Mr. Nelson. The opinion pointed out
that the editor was only "constructively guilty," the real culprit being a
reporter named Murphy. Nelson had no knowledge of the contemptuous
item until after it appeared in the paper, but under the law he was re-
sponsible for the publication. He was discharged from the sentence of a
day in jail because the Supreme Court found he had been deprived of
his rights as a citizen under the constitutional provisions for due process
of law, and upon this point the Supreme Judge was most eloquent, citing
appropriate sections of the Missouri and United States constitutions,
quoting from Proverbs and Revelation and listing an impressive array
of precedents. Winding up on a patriotic note, the Court slipped in a
line that seemed to express its exasperation over the whole business,
when it remarked: "This is the best form of government given to man
upon earth, but thank God we are promised a better one in the world
to come.**

FIFTY-FIFTY 77

The Star accepted this draw as a victory and celebrated it with a long
and forceful editorial restatement of its case against lawyers and judges
in general.

The aging Baron had no intention of retiring or even relaxing before
he had to, and his bout with Judge Guthrie simply served to focus more
attention on the grand finish he was making. A year earlier he had made
his supreme effort in the national political arena when he resigned his
post as Republican national committeeman to follow Teddy Roosevelt
out of the G.O.P. and stand with him at Armageddon battling far the
Lord and Bull Moose progressivism.

"The Republican Party is dead, as it deserves to be/' he told an Eastern
newspaperman who interviewed him. "The contest will be between
Roosevelt and Wilson. The Republican Party has gone as the Whig
Party went. It has finished its work and is done."

After Roosevelt's defeat and Wilson's election, Nelson threw the
Star's support behind the progressive measures introduced by the Demo-
cratic president in the New Freedom phase of his administration. Mean*
while, at home, the Colonel's paper pushed the Nonpartisan movement
in municipal affairs with fresh vigor. In 1914, a little more than a year be-
fore he died, the Star conducted a stunning campaign for Nelson's pet
proposition the commission form of city government. It was in this
campaign that the Star's agitation finally broke the will of the local Re*
publican organization.

Nelson's farewell in the long struggle over the City Hall occurred
at a time when the Democratic factions were beginning to quarrel again.
Tom Pendergast, feeling his oats as the new boss in Alderman Jim's
seat, was growing restive over his partnership with Joe Shannon under
Fifty-Fifty, but the Goat and Rabbit factions closed ranks to meet the
latest threat presented by the Star Party. There was a Republican ticket
in the race but the Nonpartisan represented the real opposition. The Star
conducted a long preliminary educational campaign and climaxed it
with a mammoth rally.

Three days before the election, the Republican candidate for mayor
dramatically withdrew from the race and released his following to the
Nonpartisan ticket. It wasn't enough to turn the tide and the election

78 TOM'S TOWN

resulted in another Democratic landslide. Mayor Henry L. Jost, running
for re-election, almost doubled his majority of two years before.

Following the city election campaign, Nelson engaged in another
furious battle which was precipitated by a proposal, backed by the Jost
administration and both Democratic factions, to give the Metropolitan
Street Railway Company a thirty-year franchise. The Star's publisher,
then in his seventy-third year and beginning to fail in health, person-
ally directed the newspaper's attack on the machine's generous plan to
bolster up an inefficient corporation at public expense. The case against
the franchise for the company, which was floundering in the morass of
^receivership through mismanagement and long watering of stock, was so
one sided that many party leaders who were known friends of the cor-
poration declined to enter the public debate.

Despite its weakness in argument, the new franchise won approval
at the polls by a majority of 6,788 votes, carrying all but three' of the city's
sixteen wards. Labor joined with the corporation and the political bosses
to carry the day, as the street railway employees had been promised better
wages and working conditions if the franchise was adopted. It was not
simply a victory for the Democratic administration but a victory for the
machine that operated in both parties. Republican ward bosses worked
side by side with Democrats for the franchise. The banner majorities
came from the Pendergast river wards, showing that the trend which
crushed the Nonpartisans was still working.

Nelson put his reporters to work developing a postelection scandal,
airing various charges that the franchise majority had been obtained by
fraud through purchased votes and repeaters. This storm blew strong
for several days after the newspaper published the confession of a vote
repeater, a floater from Chicago, who admitted he had earned two bucks
by voting twice. However, the investigation expired suddenly when he
was whisked away on a two-year prison sentence meted out by a Circuit
Court Judge who said he was making an example of the prisoner as
a warning to all election cheaters* The two-year term also served as a
warning to squealers, and no further confessions were forthcoming.
This swift disappearance of the vote-fraud informer had the effect of
deflating the Stars agitation for a grand jury investigation to seek out
"higher ups," and the furor ended with the newspaper supporting a

; 5. /. Ray in The Kansas City Star

The Only Issue

The machine issue grew steadily until 1940. This cartoon appeared in the climactic
campaign of that year.

8o TOM'S TOWN

movement to get a parole for the poor Chicago citizen who had ex-
posed the system and was the only one seriously affected by this crusade.

Following this run of election setbacks, Nelson opened a campaign
for a new law establishing election machinery for Kansas City that would
^discourage vote frauds, and he was in the midst of that struggle when
he fell in his last illness. Exhausted by the franchise fight, he took a va-
cation in the Colorado mountains but when he returned he didn't move
with his old vigor. His employees noticed that he left his desk at five
in the evening instead of the customary six. Then his physicians ordered
him to stay in his home, Oak Hall, but he did not rest, for he had tele-
phones installed in various rooms so he could keep in hourly communi-
cation with the office. He was put to bed and slipped into long periods of
unconsciousness, but a month before his death he rallied and called his
editors to his home to map out new plans for the election reform bill
then pending in the ^lissouri General Assembly. He followed that by
telephoning the office with suggestions for a cartoon and an editorial.
His last editorial was a call for reform, and in it he spoke again as the
Tilden Democrat, appealing to the Wilson Democrats of Missouri to
rise for the progressive cause a$d force their representatives to approve
the election bill. The campaign aroused twelve Democrats and one Re-
publican in the state Senate, far too few to save the election reform. The
bill was killed by the simple expedient of keeping it buried so deep on
the calendar that it couldn't be considered before adjournment. The
machine lobby was working so efficiently that it even seriously threat-
ened to upset the primary law that was adopted in the Folk reform
days.

Shortly after this, Nelson dropped into his last sleep. The man who
never lost had closed his career with three defeats, and the tide of reac-
tion was rising fast. Apparently his mind was on this, for he roused one
night at midnight and sent his farewell to the Star through his son-in-
law. "Those messages of sympathy and appreciation have been fine,"
he said. "But remind the men at the office of one thing. The interests that
are against Kansas City are still in control. The fight on them mustn't
let up, no matter if they do say nice things about me." He died April 13,
1915,

They said an extraordinary number of nice things about him after he

FIFTY-FIFTY 81

was dead. Indeed the praise was so fulsome that it seemed that William
R. Nelson was to be canonized in- the popular mind as one of the
American saints. This undoubtedly would have pleased the old man,
for he was vain and loved flattery, but some of it must have bored him*
profoundly. For William Rockhill Nelson, the public-spirited citizen,
the great humanitarian, patron of the arts and education, builder of
parks and boulevards, was also Baron Bill, the imperious man of
wealth and privilege, the hard-fisted businessman and ruthless fighter.

He left in trust to his heirs his wife and a daughter a large estate
that was eventually devoted mostly to public benefit through the funds
that financed the magnificent William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art
on the site of old Oak Hall. The Nelson trust had grown in value to
some twelve million dollars when his daughter died in 1926. The pub-
lisher's widow and daughter left personal fortunes totaling nearly three
million dollars which were added to Nelson's memorial u^ the art
gallery.

Nelson knew that his paper would continue for some time under the
control of his family and he probably guessed that his old associates
would show enough enterprise to purchase the property after his wife
and daughter died. At any rate, he expected that his influence would not
die with him, and he spoke of the crusade for free and honest elections
and fof* impartial courts as his legacy to the Star. "My scheme is to drive
the money out of the voting booth and out of the courthouse," he ex-
plained in a letter to his great friend, Theodore Roosevelt. "The govern-
ment must bear the entire expense of all elections and justice must be
really and not merely nominally free."

His heirs immediately faced a number of fights in carrying on his
work but on the day of his funeral there was a general truce in honor
of the town's First Citizen. Stores and public schools closed in the af-
ternoon. Post offices were closed during memorial services in Oak Hall.
Trolley cars stopped for five minutes in tribute to the streetcar com-
pany's greatest opponent. Politicians of Kansas and Missouri came to
attend the rites. Courts and public offices in Kansas City, Kansas, closed,
but on the Missouri side some of the offices in the Courthouse remained
open and none of the offices in the City Hall closed, for there were many
Goats and Rabbits who knew that Baron Bill wouldn't stay in his grave.

82 TOM'S TOWN

THE KNIFING

DESPITE its name, the famous Kansas City Fifty-Fifty deal didn't always
come out even and it operated only about half of the time. It was, how-
ever, a very useful device in the building of the machine. Without it,
the Democratic organization might have disrupted itself permanently
in factional warfare. When the machine finally developed to the point
where Fifty-Fifty was considered no longer necessary by Tom Pender-
gast, the organization began its spiral out of control. For anyone inter-
ested in the mechanics of boss government, a little attention to Fifty-
Fifty is time well spent.

Joe Shannon is reputed to be the architect of Fifty-Fifty and it is cer-
tain that he expected to be the principal beneficiary from it, as in fact he
was. Mike Pendergast felt oppressed by Fifty-Fifty and long agitated
for its abolition. Tom Pendergast benefited somewhat from it but never
seemed happy with the arrangement. Jim Pendergast, wise founder o
the Goats, put it into effect after a private confab with the Rabbit boss
in a campaign where the positions of both were being jeopardized by
factional strife.

A political organization composed of two approximately equal fac-
tions, one serving as a check on the other, would have certain advantages
over a single command if a way could be found to establish effective co-
ordination, and Fifty-Fifty offered that way. It provided that the rival
bosses get together before a campaign in an effort to agree on' a slate of
candidates. Where there was a difference on certain offices, each faction
offered its favorites in the primary and both sides abided by the result,
supporting the nominees in the final election. No matter which faction
succeeded in getting more men on the winning ticket, the patronage
was to be divided fifty-fifty. That was the hitch in the plan, and the
thing that finally wrecked it.

Tom Pendergast eventually changed Fifty-Fifty to Seventy-Thirty,
and he started in that direction a year after Nelson died when the Goats
and the Star worked together to pry Mayor Jost out of the City Hall and
give Joe Shannon more time for reading his law and history books. The
collaboration did not entail a change of policy on the part of either the

FIFTY-FIFTY 83

newspaper or the North Side Democratic boss. Suppression o the Rab-
bit leader at this juncture was to the mutual advantage of the news-
paper and Pendergast, although for the latter it meant temporary
eclipse of his party in local affairs.

Pendergast had been fairly quiet but not idle in the four-year period
when Shannonism was reaching its crest through the Rabbit boss's asso-
ciation with the Honorable Henry L. Jost. While Shannon advised, and
Jost administered the city government, Tom organized the precincts as
they had never been organized before. He went about this prosaic spade-
work with the diligence and methodical care of a census taker. He
studied election returns with the same interest that Joe Shannon dis-
played when he read a paper by Jefferson. Alderman Jim's efficient for-
mer bookkeeper was a businessman and he worked on the theory that
politics was not a science, an art or a drama of campaign time but a year-
round business. The basis of that business was not candidates pr policies
but trained precinct workers who served each day in the year, and voters
who were registered, pledged, committed, satisfied and ready to deliver.

Pendergast began the work of restoring the Fifty-Fifty balance by
raiding in Shannon's old stronghold, the county. Winning a controlling
hand in the County Committee along with Shannon, he emerged as a
state committeeman. He followed that by electing a majority of the
County Committee and naming one of his lieutenants to the chairman-
ship. Another important gain was the election of one of his chief lieu-
tenants to the post of presiding judge of the County Court, which was
an administrative body corresponding to the County Commission in
other localities. A series of operations against the Rabbits in the City
Hall accompanied these maneuvers in the county.

Politicians were quick to recognize the qualities that made Pender-
gast a forceful leader, but to the general public he was largely a name -
a saloonkeeper and a ward boss who was seldom seen despite the fact
that he had held three offices. He had been street superintendent in
Mayor Reed's first term, a county marshal for one term, street superin-
tendent for a second time under Mayor T. T. Crittenden and a council-
man for three terms. He retired with a reputation as a public servant
who made no speeches, handled patronage matters most efficiently and
intimidated opponents with his powerful fists. His pugnacity brought

84 TOM'S TOWN

him into a brush with the law in his second term as street superintendent.
Pendergast's arrest was ordered following an incident in which he inter-
fered with, and frightened off, three police officers in Sullivan's saloon
on the North Side when they attempted to arrest two suspected mis-
creants. Called to a hearing before the mayor, Tom explained that he
had stopped the police because they were hounding one of the two fugi-
tives, a former convict who was trying to go straight. The Mayor dis-^
missed the case with a light reprimand for his persuasive street
superintendent.

A Pendergast interview acquired a certain fearsome quality as the
result of an incident in his tenure as an alderman. A fellow alderman
who had crossed him was summoned to Pendergast's cubbyhole office
off the lobby of his Jefferson Hotel. The Boss was reported to have locked
the door so rhe erring public servant could not escape until Mr. Pender-
gast tired of hitting him.

These stories tended to exaggerate the Pendergast pugilistic prowess,
which was formidable enough, at the expense of his other attributes. The
Boss did much to correct the popular impression of himself in the cam-
paign of 1916, when he exhibited talent as strategist, intriguer, organizer
and long-range planner along with ruthless fighting spirit.

The Shannon-Jost forces won the first round when Pendergast at-
tempted to corral the mayoralty nomination for his personal friend and
business associate, R. Emmet O'Malley, who rode on Tom's coattails
to power and pelf and later followed him to prison. Pendergast made a
bitter fight in the primary campaign but was unable to overcome the
combination of Jost's popular prestige and Rabbit control of the City
Hall and the Police Department. Mayor Jost was nominated for a third
term but the fight did not end there. Pendergast decided the time had
come for a revolt.

At the Democratic city convention which ran roughshod over the
Goat candidates for mayor and aldermen, Pendergast bluntly stated
his intention not to abide by the result. His revolt took the form of a
political knifing, an operation that was accomplished by an order to his
following to vote for the Republican candidate for mayor. At the same
time, Pendergast offered a set of independent candidates for aldermen
in the wards he controlled.

FIFTY-FIFTY 85

The police power figured spectacularly in this new showdown be-
tween the factions with the advantage on the Jost-Shannon side, repre-
senting a reversal of the situation that existed in 1904 when Shannon had
made his bolt. Pendergast awoke on election day to find that police
friendly to his faction had been moved to the woods for the day. The
Jost-Shannon guardians of the law exhibited extraordinary concern in
preserving order, starting with a roundup of Pendergast workers long
before dawn. More than two hundred were jugged before the polls
opened, and exciting scenes were staged in courts and police headquarters
when Goat politicians obtained writs of habeas corpus to free their
friends, and police officials defied them. However, the Rabbit coup
failed to save the Jost-Shannon ticket. The North Side boss elected five
of his followers to the lower house of the Council and could count the
knifing a 'Complete success despite the fact that the Republican-Star
ticket took everything else.

Joe Shannon was demoralized and "muling in his tent,'* to use old Jim
Pendergast's phrase for a sore f actionalist. Fifty-Fifty was dead for the
time being and Tom was free to play a solitary hand until he found it
profitable to renew the Goat-Rabbit alliance. He followed up the knifing
by winning firm control of the County Committee in the August pri-
maries. His ticket for county and state offices was nominated and elected.
Jim Reed was returned to the United States Senate. The new governor,
Frederick D. Gardner, was a Democrat who was politically indebted to
the new leader of Jackson County's Democracy. The Goats moved into
the Courthouse and events were forming that would restore them to
power in the City Hall at the next election. Boss Tom Pendergast had
arrived.

FREE AND EASY

THE STORMS attending expression of the popular will at the polls created
a widespread impression that boss politicians spent most of their time
hatching plots and schemes to complicate the lives of normal people.
The contrary was the case. The Kansas City politicians as a class were
among the most convivial of men, full of the milk of human kindness,
and they devoted no more time to the business of mayhem and assassina-

86 TOM'S TOWN

tion than the nature o their operations required. Between campaigns
they concentrated on the task of restoring peace and cultivating happi-
ness.

The social side of boss politics was particularly conspicuous in the
Goat faction, which was so earnest in the endeavor to relax the com-
munity that the entertainment went on almost continuously, regardless of
changes in administration, factional disturbances, economic and social
crises that shook the nation and wars that upset the world. Tom Pender-
gast gave major encouragement to the Democratic tradition of festivity,,
and his success in this promotion increased his personal popularity and
widened his political following. It also drew upon him the unfavorable
attention of an important element who felt that the frivolity on the North
Side was sinful competition with more sober lines of business, but the
Boss did not let these solemn individuals spoil the fun.

Pendergast had the assistance of numerous sports who were imagina-
tive and industrious in devising ways to break the monotony of living in
a money-making society. Prominent among the interesting characters in
this company was Booth Baughman, who had been an intimate of Al-
derman Jim Pendergast and moved in Brother Tom's inner circle. He
took the lead in promoting some excitement in the early days of Tom's
regime. Booth combined both the practical and romantic sides of recre-
ation. He never took a serious interest in any game unless it was played
with money, but he was always a sportsman in business. In recognition
of this distinction, the money circulated in games of chance was known
as Baughman currency.

Baughman lived at Tom Pendergast's Jefferson Hotel and assisted in
its operation, the establishment being conducted in a manner to suggest
the extreme liberalism of the founder of the Democratic Party in whose
honor the hotel was named. Shortly before participating in the Jefferson
venture, Booth staged a determined revival of Missouri River revelry
which agitated the Star and other guardians of civic decorum for a
couple of seasons.

In the river entertainment, Baughman was "assisted by two other
widely known Goats, Phil McCrory and John J. Pryor, who first at-
tracted political attention as North Side saloonkeepers and later were
more celebrated as business associates of Tom Pendergast in wholesale

FIFTY-FIFTY 87

liquor and concrete. With their backing, Baughman brought the river
boat Saturn to Kansas City, fitted it out as an excursion craft with ac-
commodations for adventurous and sentimental ladies and gentlemen,
running on a schedule designed to mock the bluenoses of Missouri and
Kansas. The proprietors literally and figuratively thumbed their noses at
prosecutors and peace officers of city and state, declaring they operated -
under the navigation laws of the Federal government, which allowed for
wide latitude in excursion pastimes.

The Saturn's 1910 season was highlighted by a mass raid when the
boat docked at the foot of Main Street, police rounding up about a
hundred and fifty excursionists on charges of frequenting a gambling
establishment. That was followed by court action against the proprietors,
which ended with the judge ruling that the city's police authority ex-
tended to the middle of the river. Mr. Baughman was only temporarily
discouraged by this interference, but the river celebration finally elided in
1912, when public agitation over the Saturn reached its height after a
gambler committed suicide by diving from the deck of the boat into the
Big Muddy.

The Jefferson Hotel, which Pendergast purchased the same year that
the Saturn made its final excursion from Kansas City, carried on the Old
Town revival for seven more years. The hotel was a six-story brick af-
fair, a modest establishment in -the old part of the city, near Market
Square, but it acquired more than local notoriety after the Goat boss
made it the headquarters for politicians and convivial citizens who never
wanted to go home. The hotel's chief charm was the cabaret in its base-
ment.

There was nothing quite like the Jefferson celebration anywhere else.
Some survivors describe it as a revival of the original Free and Easy,
which started in the joints of Old Town where first were combined the
dramatic and musical arts for frontier society. It was easy to get in, but
it cost plenty to get out. These places were called burlesque houses, but
developed along quite classical lines and carried such imposing names as
The Coliseum, The Theater Comique and The Fountain Theater. They
mixed entertainment and refreshment in much the same manner as the
Jefferson Cabaret.

In Hank Clark's place, the original Free and Easy, the drinks came

88 TOM'S TOWN

with frontier jokes, songs and dances. In Valentine Love's Theater
Comique, variety numbers were offered between the acts of famous
melodramas like Mazeppa, The Mountain Meadow Massacre and The
Flaming Arrow, the customers being served at the bar or at their seats
before the stage. In Martin Regan's Fountain Theater, dizzy blondes
served the drinkers at tables while the show went on. Martin was a Demo-
cratic ward boss and a character, one of the founders of the showman tra-
dition in politics. Nobody figured out what sort of shows Martin actu-
ally put on, and nobody cared. Everybody sang and danced. Nobody
paid much attention to the actors on the stage and everybody applauded
them loudly and called them back repeatedly for encores. Everything
was good. Nothing was rotten.

The show at the Jefferson had these characteristics, and apparently a
fine time was had by one and all except, now and then, when some mem-
ber of the company became too exhilarated or was unexpectedly struck
by despondency. A brief but vivid description of the scene has been pre-
served in an account of one of the unfortunate incidents at the hotel.

A young woman, in Room 508, shot herself at the end of a long evening
in the midst of the merriment in the cabaret. Her man had done her
wrong and she was trying to drive the blues away in the stimulating
company of a traveling man from Fort Worth, Texas. Shortly after she
and her companion had ascended the marble stairs from the cabaret and
retired to their room, she attempted to end iier life.

The story of this unhappy affair was printed in the Star at the height
of the city campaign of 1914 in which the Star was opposing the North
Side boss. It was intended to focus scandalized attention on Pendergast's
hotel, but the reporter who wrote the piece was more seduced than re-
pelled by the picture he drew. "Cabaret entertainers wandered from
table to table, singing sensuous songs," he wrote. "Midnight passed and
the crowd of underworld habitues became hilarious. At one o'clock,,
the hour required by law at which to stop selling liquor, the orgy was at
its height. The hours passed and the waiters were busier than ever dis-
pensing drinks, for the Jefferson Hotel has police protection and is free
to ignore the closing law, observed by other cabarets. Outside the cabaret,,
motor cars and taxis were lined against the curb and there was a babble
of song and laughter in the grill in the basement."

FIFTY-FIFTY 89

Each step along the primrose path to the pistol shot in 508 was de-
scribed in this fascinating style. With so many interesting things going
on, the reader was left to wonder how anyone could contemplate suicide.

Pendergast also figured in the Twelfth Street activity, which was more
extensive and varied than the night life on Sixth Street. He started with
ownership of a saloon on East Twelfth and another on West Twelfth
and became the proprietor of the street's best-known saloon when he
purchased the Schattner brothers' three-door dispensary of cheer at 5
West Twelfth. This oasis in the heart of the business and theatrical dis-
trict was celebrated not only for its service but its social standing. For
twenty-five years it had been the property of a prominent Republican
family under whose direction it negotiated a gentleman's agreement
with the ministerial brotherhood to observe Sunday closing one of the
earliest and most notable gains for reform on Twelfth Street. After
Pendergast purchased it, the saloon continued to give excellent service
and became political headquarters for the society dedicated to the cause
of keeping reform away.

The Twelfth Street batde against the change that was coming was
led by Pendergast's friend and political ally, Joe Donegan, who managed
a theatrical hotel, the Edward. In connection with the hotel, Joe ran
the Edward Grill or Cabaret and the Century Burlesque Theater. Joe
was a sentimental reactionary who often declared that the three great
evils of the twentieth century were Prohibition, Vaudeville and the
Movies. He lost a fortune and broke his heart opposing them.

Donegan resorted to various expedients to keep burlesque going as the
true dramatic art of the people. He was responsible for that great innova-
tion, smoking in the theater, and he pioneered in staging boxing exhibi-
tions as added attractions. When those novelties "failed to revive the
popular taste for variety shows, Joe introduced lady wrestling matches
with a special riot squad included. One of his backstage assistants for a
time was the redoubtable Frank James, reformed train robber and brother
of immortal Jesse who once lived in Kansas City under various aliases.
The combined Donegan activity has been best described as the Uplift by
the late Steve O'Grady, writer and troubadour who made an extensive
study of the performance when he was a reporter for the Star. Joe Done-
gan himself was the spirit of the Uplift and his followers called him the

90 TOM'S TOWN

King of Twelfth Street and also the Angel of Twelfth Street in recog-
nition of his free-spending and easy-lending ways.

Joe's work' for burlesque and humanity has been forgotten, but his
pioneering in the cabaret started something that had long-range political
and social consequences. Tom Pendergast's assistants at the Jefferson
Hotel copied the cabaret routine and developed it into a political issue
for several seasons. This evolution began in the basement of Donegan's
Edward Hotel. It started when Joe opened a basement room as a place
where the showgirls who lived in his hotel could get a glass of beer with
a sandwich, after the theater closed. At that time it was against the law
to serve liquor to women in public and the Donegan^ retreat appealed to
many other ladies besides showgirls. They crowded in with their escorts
and Joe put in a piano and hired a hunchback, called the Squirrel, to play
it. The music, the beer and the food did the rest. He expanded the place,
introduced a good floor show and a large orchestra, and the cabaret be-
came the popular resort of the theatrical district.

Politically, the thing about the cabaret that was disturbing was that
it provided a popular way to circumvent the old social taboo and law
which imposed on women the awful indignity of not being allowed to
get tight with their men in public, and it also gave encouragement to the
dance craze which alarmed the puritans in the years before the First
World War. Pendergast's Jefferson Cabaret became the outstanding
exhibit of this trend, provoking agitation that 'continued until it produced
one of the major struggles of his first years as a political boss.

The public scandal which the reformers created over the cabaret has
discouraged historians from making an adequate appraisal of the old grill
as a social institution.* America's habits were altered in several ways in
those exciting Basement rooms, and not the least consequential result was
the grill's effect on the nation's ear for music. To this day, no one has
given proper credit to Joe Donegan and Tom Pendergast for their aid
in ushering in the crooner and the torch song, without which it is difficult
to imagine how Americans could have withstood the strain of Prohibi-
tion, two world wars, the collapse of machine government and various
other disorders, The old master of crooning, according to some authori-
ties, is Tommy Lyman, who coined the term "torch" and charmed the
crowds in the Jefferson Carbaret with his singing before he went on to

FIFTY-FIFTY 91

fame in the cafes of Paris and New York. His theme song is "My Melan-
choly Baby," a light blues number that received its finishing touches in
the Edward Cabaret where its composer, Ernie Burnett, was musical
director for several years before the First World War. Another famous
song of this period is Euday Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag/' which
was composed in a Twelfth Street honky-tonk patronized by gamblers
and politicians. The spirit of the buoyant and sentimental time when
Donegan and Pendergast ran the Free and Easy is embalmed in those
two old numbers.

There were various other fascinating novelties and innovations in the
cabaret, along with operations of the kind that aroused newspaper edi-
tors, politicians, W.C.T.U. members and professional snoopers. None
of this foolishness bothered Tom Pendergast himself for some time. The
Jefferson was strictly a business proposition with him. He maintained his
political headquarters in the hotel, working in a small office off the lobby,
and left the details of the hotel's management to others. He had no ear
for music and he wasn't the dancing type. After his marriage in 1907,
he settled down fast as a family man. He went home early at night and
was sleeping the sound sleep of a solid citizen when the rounders in the
cabarets were attempting to attain a new level of befuddlement.

Pendergast met the attacks of the reformers with patience and good
humor for several years. In 1916, he found it more difficult to treat the
opposition lightly, for in that year the drys staged a mammoth parade
under the direction of the W.C/T.U., which was followed by an election
in which Jackson County voted for statewide Prohibition for the first
tiifie in its history. Thanks to the voting strength of the beer swillers of
St. Louis, the Prohibition proposal was defeated in the state but it was
obvious that the white ribbon weajrers were becoming irresistible.

The Boss's uneasiness over the future of his hotel, cabaret and liquor
operations was heightened by the activities of a busybody named Nat
Spencer who made a career out of private supervision of the public
morals. Spencer conducted his reform work as secretary of the Society for
the Suppression of Commercialized Vice. He devoted major attention to
the harassment of the Jefferson Hotel and Cabaret, which reached its
climax in the final triumphant movement for the dry law.

Spencer was a tireless investigator, persisting in the face of long dis-

92 TOM'S TOWN

couragement from the police, who were unimpressed by his reports of
improper activities at the Jefferson. His campaign was helped along by
occasional disturbances at the hotel, among them the previously men-
tioned incident of the woman in Room 508 who shot herself, the slugging
of a railroadman who alleged he was attacked when he left the cabaret
after resisting two persistent ladies who were attempting to take his
dough, a fist fight in the hotel washroom and the slaying of a youth by
the Jefferson houseman, who said the unfortunate fellow was a bandit
who had tried to hold up a poker game on the fifth floor of the hoteL
The Jefferson bar license was suspended for a week following the wash-
room brawl and this was followed by a more determined assault in which
a ministerial and W.C.T.U. delegation joined Spencer, going before the
Police Board to demand action against the Jefferson. This agitation, com-
bined with the clamor raised by the Star, brought about a reorganization
in the Police Department in 1918.

In the same year that the anti-Jefferson crusaders disturbed the control
of the Police Department, the drys carried the day in Jackson County
for a second time in the statewide contest over Prohibition. The St. Louis
wets again kept the state from adopting the proposition but the margin
of victory was very discouraging to an observant politician with large
liquor interests.

Perhaps the most irritating thing to Pendergast in all the reform agita-
tion was the action of Joe Shannon, his factional rival, who added his
voice to the chorus against the Jefferson. Joe, as usual, could tell which
way the wind was blowing. He also had a jealous proprietary attitude
toward the name of Jefferson, regarding himself as the spiritual heir of
the Jefferson tradition in these parts and the proper custodian of the
Jefferson legend. He let it be known that he felt that Tom Pendergast,
who was a Jacksonian rather than a Jeffersonian, was bringing dishonor
to the name of our Third President through the notoriety of Pendergast's
hotel and cabaret. Joe's Rabbits made much of the point that they had
their headquarters in a drijgstore while the Goats had their seat of com-
mand in a saloon. Tom's irritation over these didoes of the Rabbits hadn't
settled when the reformers stirred him to wrath by questioning his pa-
triotism. The drys charged that the breweries and distilleries interfered
with the war effort, using manpower, fuel and supplies that were needed

FIFTY-FIFTY 93

for military production. Pendergast's enemies elaborated on this argu-
ment, declaring he was handling "unpatriotic German beer" a beer that
was brewed in Milwaukee.

The combined effect of these blows opened Pendergast's eyes to the
approaching disaster, and he quietly disposed of his liquor interests be-
fore the crash came. The wartime Prohibition act was adopted November
21, 1918, when the people still were whooping it up in the saloons over
the signing of the Armistice, ten days earlier. It became operative June
30, 1919, to last until the completion of demobilization. Few politicians
or saloonkeepers believed the drought would last long and there were
confident predictions that a national reaction would immediately set
in. Pendergast did not share that view and turned his attention to the
commercial prospects in mineral-water sales while the Prohibitionists
proceeded to obtain ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in a whirl-
wind tour of the states.

Prohibition killed the Jefferson and the Edward and a lot of other gay
places. Many saloonkeepers and cabaret operators were ruined financially
and never recovered, but Pendergast went through the emergency in ex-
cellent condition. He was able to dispose of the Jefferson Hotel witfi the
assistance of the city government, which suddenly got around to order-
ing an important civic improvement, widening Sixth Street to a point
where it took in a corner of the Goat boss's hotel, for which he was
awarded $79,550 in 1919. The foreman of the condemnation jury, a Pen-
dergast lieutenant, pointed out that the price allowed was larger than the
amount that Tom had asked. He mentioned this as an illustration of Mr.
Pendergast's moderation where his own and the public's interests were
involved. It also served as a timely example of Pendergast foresight and
luck.

The saloons closed "forever," January 16, 1920 actually for thirteen
years, eleven months and eleven days. Anyone who soberly watched the
spectacle of the final night in the saloons, grills and hotels could tell that
this was not the last revel before the age of national sobriety dawned, but
the beginning of a time of tremendous unrest and confusion. The sense
of foreboding was wide and deep but no one ^guessed the disturbance
would be as bad as it actually was. Tom Pendergast may not have shared
these misgivings. It is not known how he spent that long evening when

94 TOM'S TOWN

the nation said farewell to booze, but he had more reason than most
people to celebrate. His investments were secure, he had made a good
start in lines of business that would prove to be more profitable than
liquor dealing, and his political organization was intact. The reformers
had given him a beating and driven him out of the business which was a
part of the family's tradition, but the chief result of their efforts was the
creation of conditions that hurried him on the way to wealth and power.

Boom Time

DEMOCRACY, INC,

MICHAEL J. PENDERGAST contributed belligerency, fanaticism and incor-
poration to the Goat organization. Although he played second fiddle to
his older and younger brothers, Jim and Torn, he was a major factor in
building and operating the machine in the two periods dominated by the
other members of the family. A monopolist at heart, he was the first
ward leader to operate under a, charter from the courts with his Tenth
Ward Democratic Club, Inc. He pioneered in the development of voting-
line tactics at the polls and was forward in corporate enterprise in other
businesses besides politics.

Mike made himself the undisputed master of the Bloody Tenth and
the pleasure he derived from surveying his domain was spoiled only by
the proximity of the Ninth Ward, which was the home and stronghold
of his immortal enemy, Joe Shannon, the Rabbit leader. Mike engaged in
a long but disappointing effort to convert the Ninth into an adjunct of
the Bloody Tenth.

The principle of compromise, particularly compromise with Rabbits,
was regarded by Mike as one of the main fallacies of democratic doctrine.
Although he went along with his two brothers when at various times
they decided that Fifty-Fifty was an advantageous proposition, Mike
consistently preached the extermination of all Rabbits. The depth of his
feeling in this matter was revealed in a campaign in which the Rabbits
joined forces with the Ku Klux Klan to down the Goats. Addressing a
group of his Irish followers, Mike tittered a memorable expression of
Goat contempt for anti-Catholic yahoos and concluded: "Gentlemen, I'd

95

96 TOM'S TOWN

sooner believe a Klansman than any Rabbit of the Rabbit faction. They
want everything."

The founder of Democracy, Inc. was in a combative mood all the time
or so it seemed to people who didn't get along with the Goats. When
things were too peaceful and dull, he stirred up the animals the Rabbits
just for the exercise. One' Saturday afternoon he stepped into a Fif-
teenth Street saloon that was a Rabbit hangout. Inside were ten robust
trenchermen of the enemy who eyed him suspiciously and squared of?
for trouble. Mike advanced to the bar and pleasantly invited the Rabbits
to join him in a drink of beer. The surprised loafers lined up at the bar
and stood with their glasses watching Mike while he raised his glass in a
toast to Fifty-Fifty. When they lifted their glasses to drink, Mike hurled
the contents of his glass in their faces. He didn't have a chance to escape
and took a severe beating. "But it was worth it," he said afterward.

Mike infused the whole Goat organization with his gay spirit, gen-
erated much of the wild elation that swept the boys on election day and
made the guarding of polling places a dramatic event. One of his effective
devices was the double line at the polls, a gantlet that sometimes ex-
tended for hundreds of feet and was filled with men and women trained
in the ways of persuasion. The chief of the Bloody Tenth was a strategist
who observed the old Confederate admonition to get there "f ustest with
the mostest." Pendergast voting lines formed the night before election
in districts where the contest was hot. On occasions when the enemy stole
a march and formed its lines first, the Pendergast flying wedge went into
action and usually managed to recover any lost positions.

When,the evangelist and disciplinarian of the Goats wasn't cast down
by grief over a Rabbit victory or some similar trespass, he was lifted up
by the sense of glory in the fellowship of the Goats. No call of distress
from anyone whose name was on the golden roster of the Bloody Tenth's
brotherhood could go ignored. Mike devoted both time and money to
the perpetuation of this legend, and was resourceful in finding ways to
ballyhoo his unique society. He got national publicity for the Tenth
Ward Democratic Club, Inc., in 1923 when it went to the rescue of Okla-
homa's Jack Walton, about to be impeached as governor. Walton's ene-
mies in the Legislature cast aspersions on his Democratic standing and
the Governor, a Kansas City product, confounded them by producing a

BOOM TIME 97

membership card signed by Mike Pendergast. In honor of this loyal son
who was upholding the Pendergast prestige in foreign lands, Mike
ordered, a special convocation of the boys, at which suitable speeches of
confidence were given, resolutions adopted and $250 raised for the
Walton defense fund. This did not save Walton but it entertained the
Goats and impressed everyone with the wonder of Pendergast fealty.

Along with his many other interests, Mike Pendergast was an in-
veterate public servant and it was in this capacity that he was most useful
to the House. He served variously as clerk of the Circuit Court, license
inspector and city clerk, and the duties of these offices gave him a chance
to observe closely the way business is operated and enabled him to put a
finger in many pies.

All of these activities and interests laid the basis for the Pendergast
expansion in other lines of business when the saloon industry failed and
the income from public ofSceholding proved inadequate to satisfy the
growing needs and ambitions of the Pendergasts and their associates.
Both Tom and Mike were energetic and resourceful in the corporate field
and each acquired the dignity and title of "business executive" to go with
their growing political importance. Mike became president of the Eureka
Petroleum Company, specializing in selling oil supplies to local govern-
ment agencies and concerns that cultivated Democratic popularity. Tom
took a hand in various enterprises, devoting his main attention to the
sale of concrete to politically wise contractors.

Mike's service did not end with his work as an organizer, enforcer of
loyalty, promoter of monopoly in business and political affairs and in-
novator of Democracy, Inc. He kept alive the family's dynastic idea that
began with Alderman Jim, King^of the First, and provided the Housel
of Pendergast with an heir his son Jim, who was named for the
founder.

The permanent chairman of the Tenth Ward Democratic Club, Inc.
suffered from only one frustration. He went through life burdened by
the knowledge that he was not an orator. Mike finally worked up courage
to make his premiere in 1923 as a Democratic Demosthenes before the
Ninth- Ward Democratic Club, Inc. which he had established in Shan-
non's preserve. The chairman introduced him in glowing words to an
admiring audience, but Mike was overcome by stage fright and unable

98 TOM'S TOWN

to rise to his feet. The elocutionary honor o the Pendergasts was saved
by his son, Jimmy, who closed the meeting with a few characteristic
remarks.

"We are but a minority now," said James, "but we will be an organized
minority, and the day will come when the organized minority will be-
come the organized majority."

Young Jim prophesied truly.

DEMOCRATIC An> SOCIETT

THE ADROITNESS of the Pendergast command was demonstrated most im-
pressively in the period when the Goats were turning from the organized
minority into the organized majority. Although Boss Tom was in funda-
mental agreement with Brother Mike's all-f or-one ideal, he did not com-
pletely or prematurely abandon the methods of compromise, and several
of the successful operations of this time were based on the beautiful prin-
ciple of collaboration. The most remarkable one was the Democratic Aid
Society affair, which was carried out in a fashion that should favorably
impress current experts in the field of political co-operation.

Democratic Aid Society was the name given by the Star Republicans
to a rival faction in the G.O.P. which contended for party supremacy
in Kansas City for some time, the contest reaching its high point in the
first two years of the 1920*5. The so-called Aid Society fellows also were
designated as the Boss Republicans by the element which the Star backed.
Whether these Boss Republicans earned the Democratic Aid label chiefly
because they worked with or for Torn Pendergast, or mostly because
they obstructed and threatened to eclipse the Star Republicans, is a
question that has never been entirely settled. It is clear, however, that
this imbroglio did give great delight and comfort to all classes of Demo-
crats, who could see nothing but right and good in the idea of Repub-
licans serving their Democratic superiors.

Although Tojn Pendergast may not have had as much to do with
Democratic Aid as the so-called anti-boss Republicans charged, he was
in fact a large beneficiary of this movement. The legend that he had a
numerous company of Republican politicians in his service grew through

BOOM TIME 99

the years. It was said that this element in the G.OJP. conspired to offer
weak candidates in opposition to Democrats; that it worked to place
docile or friendly Republican members on the bi-partisan Police and
Election boards and co-operated in other ways in exchange for favors.
Throughout the Pendergast reign, there were various incidents and
situations which heightened or confirmed suspicions of extensive con-
nivance between politicians of the rival parties. In addition to receiving
such direct aid, the Democratic boss profited from the public cynicism,
apathy and sense of helplessness over machine politics that were induced
by the widespread talk of collaboration behind the scenes. The gopular
attitude was expressed in the frequently heard comment that Republican
politicians differed in no way from machine Democrats, except that they
obviously were not so smart.

Republican leaders recognized the harm done their cause by such
gossip and were chary about publicly airing charges of collusion with
the enemy, so it is possible that this intrigue might have remained for
the most part an open secret if the factional rivalry in the G.O.P. had
not flared beyond control. This crisis was provoked by the rise of Tom
Marks, who originally appeared on the scene as a cleanup police com-
missioner for Governor Hadley and as the Republican who was going
to take the measure of the Pendergasts on the North Side. Mr. Marks
retired from the police commissionership with considerable prestige
and influence and progressed so fast that he alarmed some members of
his own party. But for some time before this -schism developed all Re-
publicans seemed pleased over the Marks success in raiding the river
ward precincts, that traditionally belonged to the Goats. It was the Re-
publican Tom rather than the Democratic Tom who appeared likely to
become the top man on the North Side, or so the Republicans said.

Republican happiness over the new turn of events had largely evap-
orated by 1920, when the faction opposed to Marks staged an uprising.
These insurgents had received a rude shock when aldermen loyal to
Marks voted with the Democrats to elect a Pendergast lieutenant to fill
a Council seat vacated by a Republican before his term expired. They
asserted that the Marks men had voted with the Democratic aldermen
on every commercial measure coming before the council in four years,

ioo TOM'S TOWN

obtaining some nice plums for the business interests and making a farce
of some of the Council sessions.

Anti-boss Republicans declared that Marks's henchmen conferred^
nightly with Democratic leaders in a Broadway buffet. On Council night
the members of the Society four out of five of the Republican members
^of the lower house and several Republicans in the upper house caucused
at a downtown restaurant to get their orders for the evening's per-
formance at the formal meeting of the Council. Then, fortified with
liquor, food, good humor and benevolence, they marched to the City Hall
to operate the steamroller.

Showdown stage in the G.O.P. factional row was reached in the spring
of 1920 when the anti-Marks Republicans seized control of the party's
city convention and nominated their ticket, headed by a crusader whom
the Democrats denounced with righteous passion as the Star's "silk
underwear" candidate. The newspaper had made potent use of the
Democratic Aid label in downing the rival party faction in the primary
campaign, and it charged that Pendergast tried to save Marks by sending
his followers to vote in the Republican primary for Marks delegates to
the city convention. However, it appeared that more voters objected to
silk underwear than Democratic Aid, for in the final election the Demo-
crats swept the field. Their own factional breach had been closed with
the return to the fold of Joe Shannon under Fif ty-Fif ty.

It soon became evident that in this set-to the ruling cliques were fight-
ing over something more than City Hall peanuts, as the Democratic Aid
contest was resumed with greater vigor in the August primary cam-
paign, in which the Star again reported that Pendergast meddled for
Marks, and again the anti-boss group triumphed, winning control of
the Republican County Committee. Pendergast's desire to help Marks
.at this point was understandable, for the Republican North Side boss
was trying to hold the line in Jackson County against 'the Star's hero,
Arthur Mastick Hyde of Trenton, Missouri. He roared on the scene in
the 1920 primary to win the Republican nomination for governor, start-
ing a long career that, seemed especially designed to irritate Jackson
County Democrats,

Art Hyde made Pendergastism one of his chief targets and announced
that, if elected governor, he would fire the Kansas City Police Board

BOOM TIME ior

every thirty days if necessary to make the cleanup thoroughly pleasing
to his fellow Republicans and Methodists. Alarm in Kansas City Demo-
cratic circles grew apace as the politicians watched Mr. Hyde win in the
Republican primary by neatly skinning the favorite fence straddler of
the St. Louis G.O.P. machine, who tripped over the dry issue while
waving the flag in one hand and the Constitution in the other. Hyde was
the kind of prohibitionist who infuriated abstinence men of the Fender-
gast and Shannon type. The blood of the pioneer Sons of Temperance
ran in his veins. He came from Grundy County, the home county of the
Spickardsville Crusaders, a band of ladies who introduced the hatchet-
and-rake-swinging tactic to dry uplift ten years before Carrie Nation.
started out to wreck the bars in Kansas. With Mr. Hyde denouncing
Kansas City bossism and sin in tones that left no doubts about his inten-
tions, the Democrats called on their hatchet man, Jim Reed, and in-
structed him to cut the Grundy County flash down to size. The Stormy
Petrel entered upon this task with great relish.

"Hyde," snorted Jim, "comes from a hick town. He isn't city 'broke.'*

Hyde's home did indeed have an exceptional claim to fame in this
regard. Historians have traced the mythical community of Poosey, tradi-
tional home of the rubes, to Grundy County. It is located somewhere
near Trenton, but no one has ever found it as it always is around the
next bend in the road, over the next hill. So Jirn Reed was merely touch*
ing a point of civic pride when he called Hyde a hick.

"Bridlewise Jim," retorted Art Hyde, "complains because I am not
city broke. We of the hick towns call a horse bridlewise when he re-
sponds easily, canters, trots or gallops at the slightest touch of the reins.
Jim Reed is bridlewise."

Once .they got warmed up, their slugging match ran on for years,,
settling nothing but providing vast merriment for the electorate. Re-
publicans thought that Hyde's sarcasm was immensely superior to Reed's
invective and they found that he had a gift for delicate imagery. One
delightful example was his likening the golden stream of Reed oratory
to a muddy creek in floodtime overflowing into a hog wallow. Demo-
crats thought that Reed had the last word when, ,after much thought
and straining, he described the mellow Hyde bass as "the steam whistle
on a' fertilizer factory/*

TOM'S TOWN

Long before this debate died down, Art Hyde was in the governor's
chair, keeping his word to put the lid on wicked Kansas City in the
long and painful police reform of 1921-22. During this time the Demo-
cratic Aid issue remained alive, as Tom Marks was fighting vigorously
to make a comeback. The political competition took a sensational turn
in the episode of the Sunday Spotlight, a clandestine publication which
scandalized Republicans and built up circulation by championing the
cause of Denny Chester, a police character who was tried for the murder
of an heiress, Florence Barton. She was shot in a parked motor car one
night while accompanied by her fiance. Chester's defense contended
that he was the victim of a frameup engineered by a private detective
agency, and won a speedy acquittal for him at a trial in 1921 that pro-
duced many lurid and bizarre incidents. Spectators were searched for
weapons before entering the courtroom. Chester baffled medical authori-
ties and the prosecution by losing his voice, saying nary a word through-
out this storm. The Sunday Spotlight provided more than enough clamor
for him, accompanying accounts of his martyrdom with broadsides
against the Star, the anti-Marks Republicans, the Hyde police and vari-
ous crusaders in the community until it finally was suppressed by the
county authorities as a scandal sheet.

Although by this time Tom Marks was on the way out of the political
picture, the family quarrel in the G.O.P. still ran strong, for it had
broadened to include many other matters besides the original Demo-
cratic Aid. The faction to which Marks belonged had important con-
nections over the state and influence in Washington, and there were
others in it besides'Marks who hoped to take over direction of Repub-
lican affairs in Kansas City. Its outstanding local ornament was Walter
S. Dickey, millionaire claypipe manufacturer, who entered the publish-
ing field in opposition to the Star, and devoted his best efforts to the work
of trying to save the Republican Party from the influence of Governor
Hyde.

Dickey turned to politics and publishing for relief from the dull routine
of amassing millions, and succeeded only in getting rid of his money. In
1916 he ran for senator and was beaten by Jim Reed. However, he made
such a good showing against the Democratic champion that he never
got over the notion he was destined to be a statesman. Needing an organ

BOOM TIME 103

to further his political ambitions, he purchased the Kansas City Journal,
a pioneer newspaper which had come on bad days and which he picked
up in 1921 at a fire sale for one hundred thousand dollars. A friendly
banker warned Mr. Dickey that he would lose his shirt in this venture,
but the claypipe man went ahead in his stubborn way and was credited
with dropping eight million dollars or so in the newspaper hopper be-
fore he died.

The Star publishes both a morning and an evening paper and Mr.
Dickey felt that he, too, needed to be heard twice daily, so in 1922 he
purchased the Kansas City Post from Bonfils and Tammen, the Katzen-
jammer Kids of Denver journalism. Bon and Tarn had invaded the
Kansas City field in 1909 with a silent partner later identified as J. Ogden
Armour, directing magnate of the streetcar railway and electric light
systems. This swashbuckling team conducted a noisy, colorful, libel-
ous and unsuccessful effort to break the Star monopoly and were glad to
unload on Dickey for $1,250,000. Mr. Dickey ran the Post and the
Journal as respectable sheets, as was becoming a man of his dignity,
social standing and Republican conservatism. Although he was unable
to offer the Star much competition in advertising and circulation, the new
publisher succeeded in making himself a power in the Republican Old
Guard in the Harding period.

The Dickey-Marks crowd ran a pipeline to the White House through
one of its local worthies, the extraordinary E. Mont Reily. E. Mont made
history by climbing on the Harding bandwagon when he was all alone
there. He was the original Harding man, distinguished among politicians
for his powers of intuition. He started getting flashes of coming presi-
dential events when he was a boy in Texas and was the first person to
suggest Harrison for President in 1888, according to his own account.
He did the same thing for McKinley. He announced himself as the orig-
inal Hughes man in 1916. He wanted to be the original Vandenberg man
in 1936 but the Michigan Senator, probably recalling E. Mont's part in
the Harding business, hastily deflated this boom from Kansas City.

E. Mont saw the Harding handwriting on the wall one night while
he was lying in bed. He awakened his wife with the exclamation, "I have
found the man," and immediately wrote Harding a letter describing his
vision and congratulating the Ohio Senator on his forthcoming elevation.

X04 TOM'S TOWN

When Harding came through Kansas City on a swing around the coun-
try just before the "smoke-filled room" convention in Chicago, the
chances for Normalcy didn't look any better than one to one thousand to
anyone except Mr. Reily, who was the only Kansas City politician to
meet the Senator at the Union Station. He arranged a party for the lonely
Ohioan,' introducing him to Dickey and other Old Guard cronies.
Harding was grateful and after his election he allowed E. Mont to advise
in Missouri patronage matters and rewarded him further by appointing
him governor general of Puerto Rico.

Both the Puerto Rican and the Democratic Aid Society episodes were
closed at about the same time. Tom Marks's last attempt to recover
power in the Republican County Committee was put down in the
August primary of 1922. E. Mont Reily found the Puerto Ricans un-
appreciative of his efforts to bring Kansas City civilization to their back-
ward island, and he stepped out as governor general after the natives had
kicked up a storm that was heard in Washington. He returned to
Missouri to resume his work with the Republican Old Guard and found
various things to do while waiting for another hunch on a presidential

boom.

Tom Marks and many other Boss Republican figures passed from
the scene, and the reorganized G.O.P. tried to bury the ghost of the
Democratic Aid Society but was troubled by Republican involvement in
Pendergast politics to the last days of the machine.

RETIRING THE LITTLE CZAR

IN THOSE DAYS when he was laying the basis for Goat supremacy., Tom
Pendergast cleared the field for himself by greasing the skids for a
fractious sub-chieftain, Miles Bulger, and jockeying his principal Demo-
cratic rival, Shannon, out of position. In the first of these under-
takings the Goat boss had the good wishes of the Star for at the time
Bulgerism was more distasteful than Pendcrgastism to the Republican

taxpayers.

Miles Bulger brought out the best and the worst in Tom Pendergast.
He had that effect on many men, but the reaction was more spectacular

BOOM TIME 105

in the case of Big Tom. Miles was a little man who made a big splash, a
bantam who ran with the large roosters. His bright plumage, his strut-
ting and crowing were both impressive and amusing. For twelve years
he enlivened the aldermanic sessions with his quips and antics. His work
for machine government has been forgotten, but one of his utterances
still is remembered and quoted, more than thirty years after it was first
delivered. It was tossed off one day when the Honorable Mr. Bulger re-
fused to attend a ceremony at the Kansas City Art Institute.

"Art," said Alderman Bulger, "is on the bum in Kansas City."

This authoritative appraisal was greeted with hilarious appreciation in
all quarters, but particularly on Twelfth Street. For some time the boys
in the downtown saloons and poolhalls had looked with misgivings at
the progress of things esthetic on the South Side and Bulger's comment
served as a timely statement of their opinion.

Pendergast hoped to use Bulger to break the Shannon hold on the
Courthouse. He backed Bulger for presiding judge of the County Court
and then sat back to enjoy the show.

Tom's pleasure in this maneuver was short lived. Miles had large ideas
of his own and his sense of importance was based on a record of consid-
erable achievement. Starting out as a plumber's apprentice, he had forged
ahead rapidly in both political life and business. He became a wealthy
man through his operations in the construction field as one of the owners
of a cement company. His skill as a political organizer brought him
recognition as the Little Czar of the Second Ward. With his elevation
to the County Court, an office carrying authority over the administrative
affairs of the county, he seemed to feel that he was in a strategic position
to set himself up as one of the big bosses.

Republican critics of Bulger's regime made "road cinch," "pie-crust"
-paving and "deficit" familiar terms to the Jackson County voters. The
deficit in the road and bridge fund ran beyond a million dollars. Bulger's
extravagance didn't upset Pendergast, but the Little Czar and the Rabbits
worked together too well to suit some of the Goats. Important members
of the Goat faction complained that Bulger monopolized the patronage
and business favors in the county and warned the Boss that the Little
Czar was double-crossing him, but Pendergast was slow to believe it.
Pendergast put down a revolt in his faction to elect Bulger for a second

106 TOM'S TOWN

term and went to his assistance to checkmate a grand jury investigation
o the handling of road funds. But Bulger continued to build up his
monopoly and run with the Rabbits, and the break came when he flopped
to the Shannon faction in a dispute over the control of some sixty road
overseers, the bulwark of the county machine. He followed that by sup-
porting a candidate for governor in opposition to Pendergast's choice and
climaxed his defiance by proclaiming that he was going to take over the
Boss's seat at a time when Pendergast was dangerously ill from a mastoid
infection.

To carry out the work of ridding the world of Bulgerism, Mike and
Tom Pendergast made two of their most celebrated selections of winners.
For one of the places on the Jackson County Court in 1922, they picked
Henry F. McElroy, who later drew national attention as the despotic
city manager of Kansas City, the official spokesman of the machine and
the chief engineer of the municipal steamroller. For a second place on the
County Court, the Goats backed Harry S. Truman of Independence,
later United States Senator and Vice-President and now the President of
the United States. They were nominated and elected and gave an efficient
and economical administration of the County Court, cutting in half the
$1,200,000 deficit which Bulger left.

The business of properly disposing of Miles Bulger remained unfin-
ished, however, during all the time that McElroy and Truman, worked
together to restore Goat authority and prestige in the Courthouse. After
leaving his county post, Bulger succeeded in getting himself elected to
the state Legislature, through a beneficial redistricting which he had at-
tended to while he was still presiding judge of the court. In the Legisla-
ture he amused himself thinking up measures designed to harass the
Goats. Bulger remained annoyingly healthy and well to do. Cut out of
big contracts by the political combine, he managed to keep his cement
company going with the commercial contacts he had formed. It seemed
that nothing less than the full treatment would suppress Miles Bulger,
and this thought was impressed on the Goats in painful fashion one day
in 1923, when the Little Czar used his fists to settle accounts with Judge
Henry F. McElroy. The Judge, who was tall, muscular and alert, was
reported by the Star to have suffered all the damage in this ruckus.
Besides injuring the Goat dignity, this story aroused the Goat sense of

BOOM TIME 107

injustice, for it explained that McElroy was attacked when his hands
were in his pockets and the Little Czar's husky bodyguard stood by
prepared to interfere if McElroy resisted.

The Bulger farewell in politics was a bum's rush in which the Pendcr-
gast and Bulger factions staged a classic exhibition of the "mob primary,"
the local institution perfected by the ward bosses to enable them to keep
the party organization firmly in their hands. Under this system, delegates
to the state convention of the party were nominated at mass meetings
held in each ward or township. In some of these party contests packing-
house rules prevailed and the voters who mixed in the affray had to be
bold and strong.

The Goats had both passion and numbers on their side on the seventh
of March, 1924, when their forces moved into the Second Ward strong-
hold of Miles Bulger. The voting was to take place in the evening at
South Side courtroom, annex of the Nineteenth Street police station.
Bulger was prepared for trouble, having recruited a strongarm squad
headed by Oscar Benson, the Terrible and Unterrified Swede, who con-
sidered himself a match for the Terrible Solly Weissman, mastodonic
champion of the Goat bruisers. But Miles depended on more than brawn
to carry the battle. He had read of the Trojan War and his version of the
wooden horse trick was a morning visit to the South Side court by sixty
or so men and women from his headquarters. They sat through the
morning proceedings and when court adjourned at noon they remained
in their seats. They intended to stay until evening, holding the line
against the Goats. The police judge ordered them to leave but they re-
fused to budge. He called attendants to oust them and there was a tussle
in which a clerk of the court got clipped on the jaw. Then the judge
ordered the crowd locked in.

In the afternoon the Pendergast forces gathered outside the building
and milled around when they found the doors locked. The Bulgerites
inside stood at the windows and hooted at them. The Goats shouted in-
sults and threats in return. Miles Bulger arrived with his bodyguard to
survey the situation and found everything going according to plan. He
swaggered about, ignoring the hisses from the Goats in the line surround-
ing the building, waving at his followers inside, who cheered him. He
ordered coffee and sandwiches sent in to the gallant band holding the

io8 TOM'S TOWN

fort, and retired to his headquarters on the West Side Hill to direct the
final action.

Bulger's major stroke was delivered at dusk, shortly before the court
was to be opened at seven o'clock for the voting. To the relief of his be-
sieged followers he sent an army several hundred strong. Leading the
band was a mangy donkey, escorted by the Terrible and Unterrified
Swede Benson himself. When the Bulger army approached the court
building, the Goat warriors locked arms.

"Hold that line," shouted Aldermen William Flynn and William E.
Kehoe, Pendergast lieutenants in charge of the Goat army of men and
women.

"Break that line," the Bulgerites shouted.

The Terrible Solly was looking for the Terrible Swede, but before this
desirable meeting could take place the police seized the Swede and his
donkey. It required the services of forty stout police officers to separate
the partisans. One man was shot. Three men were badly cut up. Women
fainted. The son of Alderman Flynn suffered a knife wound in the
throat which required thirty-nine stitches. He exemplified the political
fortitude of the Goats by announcing he would be out of the hospital to
vote in the city election five days later.

Solly Weissman was among the fifteen battlers arrested on the scene.
He continued the struggle in the police holdover and was testing his
weight against four men when officers interfered and sent him to a
separate cell.

Fifteen minutes after the fight outside the South Side court started, the
Goats were in complete command of the situation and their delegates
were named. Five days later they won the Second Ward again in the
city primary. The Bulgerites planned to rush the polls to vote for their
own delegates to the city convention, but turned back when they found
a long double line of Goats waiting for them.

Pendergast had decreed political exile for the Little Czar and the
sentence was final but Miles couldn't quit without another gesture. He
attended a party of his followers and danced for the first time in twenty-
five years to exhibit his Hghtheartedness. Then he joined Joe Shannon in
the climactic struggle between the Rabbit and Goat factions that de-
veloped almost immediately after the mob primary and reached a fateful

BOOM TIME 109

decision in the fall campaign. In this endeavor he was able to extract a
moment of delicious revenge but it was only a moment.

LITTLE TAMMANY

CAS WELCH, the boss of Fifteenth Street, had to do some heavy thinking
after Miles Bulger was eliminated for the Little Czar's fall brought up
the question of the Welch future in a very pressing fashion. In thirty
years of steady advancement as a politician, businessman and dispenser
of Rabbit justice, Cas.had not faced so weighty a problem as this one:
Where would he stand in the final conflict between Joe Shannon and w
Tom Pendergast? That showdown engagement developed swiftly in
the summer of 1924, roaring to a double climax in the August primary
and the November general election.

Judge Welch was a personal friend and sometime business associate of
Pendergast. He was the protege and chief lieutenant of Joe Shannon.
Joe had picked him when he was eighteen for the role he was to play,
showing rare j udgment, for Cas became the most useful ally of the Rabbit
chieftain, the one who held the line in the city against the encroaching
Pendergast faction. The Welch organization by 1924 had grown to a
size where Cas could consider the advantages of setting himself up as an
independent boss.

Boss Shannon doubtless knew what Boss Welch would do in this
situation, and Boss Pendergast surely had a good idea of what to expect.
The answer was, of course, that Mr. Welch would do whatever was good
for Cas and his boys, regardless of personal, factional or party allegiances.
The boss of Fifteenth Street played machine politics more primitively
and openly than either Pendergast or Shannon. His headquarters was
called Little Tammany in recognition of the fact that it was a perfect
model of the New York organization of the days of Tweed and Croker.
An old garage building served as the control center for two important
wards in a business and residential area bordering the downtown section.
The job of serving the political needs of this region required the services
of a man of many talents, for the Little Tammany district contained
most of the elements that go to make the modern city a bewildering com-

no TOM'S TOWN

plex. The boss had to work with important commercial interests and at
the same time satisfy a large population of native whites mixed with
Negro and foreign-born groups who existed on the subsistence level,

Welch rose to power administering justice, after he had won some
political recognition through his Irish geniality and pugnacity. His fight-
ing ability when he was a boy impressed Kansas City's First Citizen,
William Rockhill Nelson, who looked on appreciatively while young
Cas thrashed a rival newsboy who was trying to muscle in on his corner.
Colonel Nelson offered the winner a job as office boy at the Star but Cas,
for some unexplained reason, refused the golden opportunity for journal-
istic fame and fortune.

The hero of Little Tammany figured so frequently and spectacularly
in fist fights that many people got the idea that he owed his success large-
ly, if not entirely, to his athletic prowess. Cas had many engaging quali-
ties besides skill in slugging. He was recognized early as a natural leader
of men and a favorite of the ladies. No party of the Little Rosebud Club
or the Lady Boilermakers was a success without the presence of this
smiling, magnetic, flashily dressed Irishman.

Although his formal schooling ended when he was nine, Cas quickly
learned enough to qualify himself as a, justice of the peace in a court
where the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job were needed every
day. Judge Welch didn't have a lawyer's degree -fortunately for him
none was required by the law but he had the judicial temperament
without the legal solemnity. Justice rather than dignity was his ideal.
He made that plain at the start, posting a set of rules that pleased the
proletarians in his district and amused members of the Kansas City Bar
Association. Cas didn't like lawyers at the moment and his first rule
read:

"My idea of a justice mill is a place where people can get justice with-
out a lawyer declaring himself in on it. Fm not going to run this court
for the lawyers.'*

Rule 2: "I don't know what's in the books but I can read a man's face
as good as the chief justice of the supreme court."

Rule 3 warned the corporations that they would not be able to deprive
the poor man of justice in this court. "A lot of people have been bluffed
out of court. No bluffs will go here."

BOOM TIME in

Rule 4: "People won't have to have a lawyer to get justice here. I'll be
their lawyer."

Rule 5: "There are too many delays and continuances in the law. They
are part of the lawyer's game. Justice quick and cheap is my motto."

The Justice also announced that "no spitting will be tolerated." His
regulations for sanitation and decorum in the courtroom were enforced
with a tolerant hand, however, for the seekers of justice who came to him
included many men whose democratic philosophy was inextricably
bound up with spitting tobacco juice where they pleased. Among them,
also, were a number whose passion for right demanded fistic expression
and Gas's free legal counsel included expert services in separating brawl-
ing litigants.

Gas's prejudice against lawyers and his bias against corporations, did
not mean that these individuals and interests could not get justice in his
court. His sympathies were so broad that citizens of every class and con-
dition received his earnest attention. An illustration of Gas's desire to
see everybody happy was given in the case of two litigants, both of them
deserving parties and each bearing a promise from the Judge that he
would get justice. Gas did not realize the predicament he had placed him-
self in until the case was called and the two friends of the Court stood
before him. Recovering quickly from his lapse, Judge Welch declared
that this issue was of such a special nature that a change of venue to
another court was required.

The J-P courts, as they were called, in this time were in very low public
esteem. The Star promoted a constant crusade to abolish them, but made
little progress, for tht justice-of-peace-court system was deeply rooted in
machine politics. Political lawyers, professional bondsmen and fixers
operated ppenly in some of these tribunals which were once called "the
poor man's court.**

The reform agitators threatened to interrupt Gas Welch's career on
the J-P bench when they organized a movement in the state legislature
for adoption of a measure that would have required justices of the peace
to have law degrees. That effort failed and Gas confounded his critics
by introducing a private reform that improved his legal tone. Develop-
ing a studious bent, he took a short course in Blackstonc.and arranged
a special examination for admission to the bar, which he passed with

ii2 TOM'S TOWN

flying colors. He was a versatile citizen and he continued his work for
practical justice for trouble-laden Fifteenth Street society while expand-
ing his political duties and business interests.

Before he finished Welch had a sand company and interests in other
concerns. He looked and dressed like a successful businessman and
moved in the company of prominent citizens. He took up golf, gave up
hard liquor and courted a genteel lady who had been a teacher of music
and arts in the Kansas City schools. This woman supervised Gas's refine-
ment, but her good work was interrupted one night when she com-
mitted suicide. Welch's enemies circulated the snide report that his
teacher friend took her own life out of discouragement over Cas's back-
sliding and it was said that the Little Tammany boss grieved over this
incident long afterward. It is easy to believe that Welch regretted many
things in his life but it's a mistake to assume that he was lacking in a
genuine desire to rise in the world's esteem. In fact, it may be said he
was an exceptional success considering the environment and the sys-
tem that produced him. Of those that grew up with Cas Welch in the
hazardous society that created Little Tammany, hardly any had done
well at all and no other did so well as Cas.

The keenness and ruthlessness of the competition were demonstrated
in numerous impressive ways in the 1924 race when Welch found he
must choose between Pendergast and Shannon. The break between the
major bosses came six years after the old Fifty-Fifty arrangement be-
tween the Goats and Rabbits had been restored. Shannon had made a
rapid comeback after 1920 and his demands for recognition and spoils
indicated that he had not been sufficiently chastened by the knifing he
received from Pendergast some years earlier.

The new factional war followed a Democratic defeat in the city elec-
tion that came less than a month after the sad affair of Miles Bulger. Boss
Tom Pendergast felt very bitter about that defeat, for which he blamed
Shannon. The losing candidate, Mayor Frank Cromwell, was an amiable
butter-and-egg man who suffered a spectacular decline in political popu-
larity in a two-year turn in the City Hall. Shannon had insisted on his
renomination in the face of Pendergast's warnings, and protests from
even some elements of his own faction. The electorate's quick confirma-
tion of Pendergast's judgment on Mayor Cromwell was accepted by the

BOOM TIME 113

North Side boss as final evidence that Shannon had lost his old political
acumen as well as the right co-operative spirit. The difference between
the bosses grew until it reached the point where Shannon determined on
a full-scale assault in an effort to reassert Rabbit dominance over the
Goats or at least to stem the onward march of Pendergast. He obviously
sensed that this was his last chance to arrest the trend in favor of the
North Side organization.

Shannon made his bid for state power with Floyd E. Jacobs of Kansas
City as a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination while the Goats
backed an outstate man, Dr. Arthur W. Nelson of Bunceton, for the
place. Shannon offered a rival slate of candidates for county offices to re-
store Rabbit influence in the Courthouse, where the Goat prestige was
flourishing under the administration of McElroy and Truman. Shannon's
alarm over the recent vote trend was fully justified when the Goat
county ticket won a complete victory and Dr. Nelson was nominated for
governor. There was only one alternative left for Joe Shannon he must
resign himself permanently to a minor place in the machine or use the
knife as Tom Pendergast had done eight years earlier.

The November election campaign presented a very confusing picture.
Another large complication besides the Democratic factional dispute was
the interference provided by the Ku Klux Klan. This fiooded^organiza-
tion of religious bigotry, racial hatred and general human cussedness wa$
in the height of its postwar revival. The confusion it created in Jackson
County was heightened by the fact that the Klansmen in this region were
not the .ordinary one-hundred-per-cent Americans who were the Elian
ideal. They were two-hundred-per-cent Americans, so aptly described in
a popular joke of the period. They didn't hate just Catholics, Jews and
Negroes. They hated everybody.

The Pendergasts declared that the Klan in Jackson County combined
with the Republicans against the Kansas City Irish. Cas Welch refused
to go along with this hated combination, deserting his old leader to stand
with Pendergast. His Catholic and party loyalties figured in this decision,
along with practical political foresight. Even if Shannon succeeded in
his current maneuver, it was evident that he was slipping, for the basis
of his power was disappearing with the whole county finding its center

ii 4 TOM'S TOWN

in the city. Logically Little Tammany belonged in an alliance with the
city machine rather than the old county-boss faction.

In the last stand against this trend, Joe Shannon and Miles Bulger
crossed the party line in November, delivering votes that helped to elect
the Republican ticket to the county offices and put a Republican in the
governor's chair. For Bulger, it was his moment of revenge. For Shannon,
it was a brief reprieve. It would be four years before Pendergast would
have another chance to promote a man for governor, two years before he
could hope to recover control of the Courthouse. By this knifing, it ap-
peared that Shannon was gaining enough time to rebuild his shattered
organization for another round with Tom Pendergast. But his time had
run out and he had permanently lost the services of Cas Welch, without
whose aid he was never again in position to challenge Boss Tom.

The Goats were furious over Shannon's treachery and there was im-
mediate talk of drastic reprisals. The only happy Democrat the morning
after election was Miles Bulger. He read the news of the Goat debacle
over his morning coffee. The sun was shining and the birds were singing
when he left his home to go downtown to celebrate the victory with his
few surviving followers. He had waited long for this day and meant to
enjoy every minute of it. Waiting for a streetcar, Miles saw a battleship-
gray limousine pull up at the curb. The tires screeched to a sudden halt,
the car door swung open and there was Tom Pendergast, all two hundred
and twenty-five pounds of him.

"Hello," said Tom in a tone that silenced the whistling birds and made
Miles Bulger's world stand still. Mr. Pendergast also had waited long for
this moment and his joyous anticipation of the next few minutes was
obvious as he propelled his bulk toward the one hundred and thirty-five
pound Bulger.

Miles had no time to think, but even in this emergency he displayed
his characteristic wit and agility, raising hands to nose to thumb a last
insult at the same time that he turned to run in the direction that Pender-
gast was going. Big Tom soon gave up the race and stood watching the
former Little Czar disappear, marveling at his speed and the special dis-
pensation that kept him just out of reach of Pendergast fists. Miles was
still running several minutes later when a friend hailed him and asked
where the fire was.

BOOM TIME 115

"Tom Pendergast," puffed Mr. Bulger. "He's got a gun." He didn't
pause for further explanation.

The celebration over Tom Pendergast's defeat in 1924 was a very brief
affair all around. On or about this day, the Goat boss scrapped Fifty-Fifty,
leaving nothing for Shannon. Gas Welch would get whatever fraction
Pendergast decided he should have. The day for the next act, which
brought Big Tom to the center of the stage as the supreme'boss of Kansas
City, was much nearer than Joe Shannon or the Republican managers
suspected.

THE NONPARTISAN CHARTER

IN THE WINTER of 1924-25, when the Coolidge inflation and Prohibition
were beginning to hurry America's millions down the road toward finan-
cial and moral disaster, a band of earnest men ushered in what was de-
clared to be a new era for municipal government in Kansas City. As a
result of their efforts, the charter under which Kansas City now operates
was adopted. This charter was designed as an instrument to toss the old
political bosses in the ash can. By an ironic 'turn of political fortune, it
actually introduced the long period of Pendergast boss rule.

The charter proponents were business and professional men, edu-
cators, ministers, club women and labor representatives who did not share
the prevailing postwar cynicism over the condition of democracy in
America. They believed that democracy as an agency of political govern-
ment could be made to work, and even was working to some extent.
Conspicuous among these optimists were R. E. McDonnell, head of the
Charter League, and Walter Matscheck, director of the Kansas City Civic
Research Institute.

Mr. McDonnell, a practical idealist, was the chief of an engineering
firm which specialized in public utility projects for municipalities. He
was one of the pioneers of the charter reform movement that grew out of
the Nonpartisan agitation led by the Star under Nelson. Mr. Matscheck,
a solemn academic gentleman, was a strange type on the local political
stage. He came to Kansas City in 1918, with a degree from the University
o Wisconsin, to head the Civic Research Institute, an organization with

ii6 TOM'S TOWN

no official standing which was supported financially by a small group of
business and professional men who were sympathetic to modern ideals
and impressed by scientific talk.

Mr. Matscheck's somewhat statistical style of oratory made an impres-
sion that alarmed a lot of politicians who were perfectly satisfied with
the state of democracy in the 1920*5.

"The point" is," Mr. Matscheck argued, "that the real business of gov-
ernment, particularly local government the unit of the city is not
governing in any strict sense. It is administering. It is doing work, carry-
ing on operations like street cleaning, building sewers, putting out fires,
and so on. That's not a matter of political science, not of governing in
the older sense. It's administrative science, and that's where democracy
is working. The cities that have adopted the manager form of administra-
tion are showing the state and federal governments how democracy can
be made to work freed from the political machinery that has been built
up around them."

In other words, bureaucracy was preparing to save government o the
people, by and for the people. Mr. Matscheck had evidence to support his
case. The city manager system had a record of increasing success extend-
ing over a quarter-century. It had been adopted in hundreds of cities,
both large and small, where it created city councils that were thoroughly
representative through nonpartisan redistricting. It stopped graft,
boodling and extravagance by the institution of a budget system to con-
trol funds. It brought a vast improvement in technical departments like
engineering, health, street and fire protection and elevated the quality o
personnel by introducing the merit system for selecting, retaining and
promoting employees. It encouraged planning and kept the city expan-
sion on a sound basis with adequate sinking funds. It enlarged the func-
tions of city government to include social welfare, health activities and
public provision for recreation.,

"These are really revolutionary processes,'* said Mr. Matscheck. "They
are triumphs for democracy. The state and national governments are
showing the same tendency that is found in city government.'*

This was the hope of the charter campaign which reached its climax
in February, 1925, a hope that seemed certain of realization. The charter
election had been well timed, by its friends, for it came on the heels of

BOOM TIME 117

the factional war between the Democratic Goats and Rabbits, traditional
opponents of the nonpartisan scheme. The Democratic internal strife
was not the only thing that cheered the Charter hopefuls. They remem-
bered the Republican gains in the city election of 1924, and felt secure
in the thought that the G.O.R still held the upper hand for the Re-
publicans, under the leadership of Mayor Albert I. Beach and backed by
the Star, were formally committed to the new charter cause.

Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that T. J. Pendergast
became a convert of the charter evangelists, following the old axiom that
if you can't beat a movement, join it. His faction possibly could have de-
feated the charter if it had chosen to oppose it but Big Tom had decided
that he should be the one to britig nonpartisan government to Kansas
City. He and his associates saw some things in the proposed charter that
they liked. Joe Shannon saw the same things and was vastly alarmed. He
resisted the reform vigorously but was overwhelmed by the strange com-
bination that worked on election day to adopt the charter, 37,504 to
8,827.

Two of the most advertised features of the new nonpartisan charter
were things that appealed to the town's greatest exponent of partisan or-
ganization schemes.

Concerning the provision substituting a single nine-man City Council
for the old aldermanic Council of two houses with thirty-two members,
Pendergast remarked to a reporter who respected his confidence :

"It ought to be as easy to get along with nine men as thirty-two/*

The new electoral system established by the charter was equally appeal-
ing to the organization leader. The charter set up a primary for nomina- ,
tion of two candidates for each office, to be followed by a run-off or final
election a few weeks later. All candidates were to be entered in the
primary as "Independents," appearing on the ballot without party label
or designation. There was ao limit on the number of candidates filing
for the primary and the nominations went to the two candidates polling
the largest number of votes the winner and the runner-up. As the sys-
tem actually worked out, it strengthened the control of the bosses and
the party organizations over the selection of officeholders. The idea that
independent citizens would run for office without the encouragement of
an organization was a fantasy that never provoked anything except mirth

ii8 TOM'S TOWN

among practical politicians. Under the nonpartisan system, Kansas City's
history has been a continuation of the old struggle between the two
major parties behind the independent fajade.

Under the old charter, the city's two-house Council had a lower
house with one seat from each of the sixteen wards, an upper house of
sixteen aldermen elected at large, and a mayor elected at large who sat
in neither house.

The new charter divided the city into four districts, replacing the six-
teen wards, and they were expected to be more difficult to control than
wards. Each district elected one councilman to the one-house Council and
four councilmen were elected from the city at large. The mayor, also
elected at large, was stripped of most of his old powers and reduced to
the status of president pro tempore of the Council. He was given one
vote in the Council but of his old powers he retained only the control of
the Park Department while the authority over directors of the various
other departments was invested in a city manager who was elected by the
Council. The city manager, who was supposed to be a professional ad-
ministrator rather than a politician, was of course responsible to the
Council and could be removed by a vote of a majority of the Council. He
was, in effect, the city's "hired man" and was so called in the innocent
early days of the reform, but it was apparent that he would wield enor-
mous authority and that he might become a greater power than any
mayor had been if, by some mischance, he controlled five of the nine
Council votes in carrying out measures that were not consistent with the
spirit or letter of the nonpartisan charter.

The charter promoters were not unduly alarmed over such a prospect
for they were men of good faith who took seriously the pledges of the
party leaders and, moreover, they expected the Republicans to win.
Mayor Beach, the man who upset the Democratic machine in the spring
of 1924, had a smile that had been good for five thousand votes then, and
there was no reason to suppose that a year in the City Hall had seriously
tanushed his toothsome charm. The Election and Police boards, which
were not affected by the charter, change, were filled with men appointed
by a Republican governor, so it was certain that the Democratic vote get-
ters on the North Side would not be encouraged to run wild in the first
nonpartisan election.

5. /. Ray in The Kansas City Star

"Ah, a Loophole !"

Final machine trick under the 1925 charter occurred in the 1939 Recall contest,
which inspired this cartoon.

i2o TOM'S TOWN

The dominant Republican and Democratic organizations went
through the motions of observing the nonpartisan charter conventions,
each offering tickets that ran without the old party labels but none the
less were recognizable to all true partisans. The Beach group of candi-
dates, selected by a city-wide committee of sixty-five and headed by
Mayor Beach, was obviously the choice of the Republican Party and the
Star. The group selected by the Democratic statesmen at a meeting in a
downtown club was called the Jaudon group in honor of Ben Jaudon,
the popular city treasurer who was picked for the mayoralty spot in
honor of his outstanding work for the Democratic Party, he being the
only representative of that party who had survived in the Republican
city landslide in the previous year.

The light vote cast in the election which established* the new charter
had indicated the nonpartisan manager idea wasn't very exciting to the
citizens as a whole, but the primary campaign that followed produced a
record city primary vote. The sudden surge of interest was not caused
by the eloquence of the candidates in presenting the nonpartisan idea
but by a renewal of the old struggle for power behind the nonpartisan
pretense. The complacency which the citizens later revealed in the face
of glaring violations of the nonpolitical principle of the new charter was
not surprising in view of the manner in which the campaign of '25 was
conducted. The Star maintained its historic association with the move-
ment that had been fathered by Nelson by indorsing two of the Council
candidates in the Jaudon group. This handsome gesture from the Re-
publican newspaper did not make much of an impression on the cynical
Democratic politicians, however, for the two men approved by the Star
were two of the Democrats most likely to be elected, and otherwise the
paper was working for the election of a Republican mayor and a Repub-
lican majority in the Council.

The turning point in the contest was reached one day when T. J.
Pendergast and Joe Shannon came face to face in one of their rare meet-
ings on a downtown street. This chance meeting of the bosses occurred
October 15, 1925. That was two days after the primary in which the
Jaudon group, the ticket backed by Pendergast and Welch, triumphed
over the Shannon candidates for the right to meet the Republicans 10
the city election, November 3. Tom and Joe had a large curbstone audi-

BOOM TIME 121

ence, which included George K, Wallace, a Star reporter who had grown
prematurely gray covering the shenanigans of politicians. Another wit-
ness, and one who had a closer view than he relished at the time, was
George- Hamilton Combs, Jr. Mr. Combs is now a news analyst and
commentator for radio station WHN, New York. In 1925 he was a rising
young lawyer in Kansas City with an ambition to sit in Congress. He
served a term in the Seventieth Congress, 1927-29, but on October 15,
1925, it appeared that he had put an end to his political career when he
attempted to serve as a peacemaker between the Goats and Rabbits.

The city primary contest had left more bad blood and neither Tom nor
Joe would make the first move toward patching up the new dispute.
"They avoided each other with studied Celtic blandness and it looked
as if the party would be split wide open again," said Mr. Combs, recall-
ing the incident some twenty years later. His memory of that occasion
was made doubly vivid by the explosiveness of Tom Pendergast.

"During this period," Mr. Combs related, "I was informed that Mr.
Pendergast was incensed over what he regarded as my personal attacks
on him during the campaign. Aside from the reference to him as not
big enough to dominate the party, I had made no such assault and felt
badly about the misunderstanding because both of these Irishmen were
the sort to command a good deal of affection (as well as respect!) and
Tom had been generous to me in the past."

So Mr. Combs attempted to clear up the matter when he encountered
Mr. Pendergast on Walnut Street, and Mr. Pendergast immediately
launched into a tirade. It was going full blast when Joe Shannon strolled
along and horned in on the argument, which attained greater velocity
when Shannon justified the Rabbit criticism of Pendergast with the
explanation: "You were trying to grab all the jobs."

"There the issue was joined," Mr. Combs continued, "with Joe hardly
looking at either of us and Tom shaking an angry finger at both of us
indiscriminately."

Time passed, the crowd grew in size, Mr. Shannon and Mr. Combs
grew unhappier and unhappier, and a Star cameraman appeared and
focused his camera without interrupting the Pendergast lecture. Finally
the camera snapped and the Star got a picture of Tom brandishing his
index finger under Mr. Com&s's nose as he declared he- didn't know

122 TOM'S TOWN

whether his people would ever again be for any of the Rabbit people.
Or the phrase was, as Reporter Wallace reported it, "I don't give a damn
what you do."

However, the outburst resulted in Tom and Joe's getting together,
"either the next day, or the day after," according to George Combs. He
should know, for their reconciliation after this highly satisfactory blow-
off resulted, for one thing, in their handing him the nomination for
Congress in 1926.

Pendergast's browbeating of his old rival figured decisively in his
rise to power for the Rabbit votes were needed to save the day for the
Democrats in the city election that followed less than three weeks after
the exciting scene on Walnut Street.

Political control of Kansas City for the next thirteen years was decided
November 3, 1925, by fewer than two hundred votes. The all-important
margin was registered in the case of George L. Goldman, whose election
in the most closely contested Council race gave the Democrats a five-to-
four majority in the new governing body. His majority was 304, so a shift
of 153 votes would have given the majority to the group headed by Beach,
who was re-elected mayor by a majority of only 534 votes.

As the full implications of five-to-four dawned on Pendergast's oppo-
nents, they attempted to forestall disaster by contesting the Goldman
election, making the usual election theft charges. The Democrats check-
mated them by going to the Supreme Court with a mandamus action
compelling the Election Board to certify the returns showing that Gold-
man had been duly and properly elected,

A few days after the election, Pendergast and the other Democratic
leaders met in Banker Kemper's office to decide on the man for city man-
ager. Their choice was Henry F. McElroy, the businessman who had
done such good work in eliminating Bulgerism from the County Court.

When the new city government was inaugurated in April of the
following year, City Manager McElroy bluntly put an end to the non-
partisan nonsense. His would be a Democratic administration,, he an-
nounced. No one would be in doubt where the responsibility rested, he
said. Aud no one would fail to know who held the power.

The scientific administration that began on this April day in 1926

BOOM TIME 123

showed Walter Matscheck and his college-trained experts many things
that weren't taught in schools.

COUNTRY BOOKKEEPER

HENRY F. MCLROY represented the final flowering o the idea that what
government needed was a businessman to run it. In selecting him for city
manager under the new nonpartisan charter for the unicameral form of
municipal government. Boss Tom Pendergast impressed the Real Estate
Board and the Chamber of Commerce with his fundamental soundness
for Mr. McElroy was the practical man par excellence, a self-made suc-
cessful citizen and the one-hundred-per-cent type of common-sense
American. The only real dissent came from the circle represented by
Walter Matscheck and the Kansas City Civic Research Institute, who felt
that the Council should go outside the city and import an administrator
who had some academic background and professional standing in the
f new science of government. Their suggestions were not well received for
they irritated local pride and violated the long-cultivated notion that
success in running a -store, a poultry house or a real estate office uniquely
qualified a man to manage the public's affairs.

Kansas City had elected numerous businessmen mayors in the past
without producing startling confirmation for the theory that they were
handier at this trade than politicians or bureaucrats. However, it was felt
that this did not constitute a fair test, for the mayors were so hedged in
by politicians that they had little chance to introduce the efficiency, dis-
cipline and economy that prevailed in their own private enterprises.
Conditions established by the new charter were believed to be ideal for a
full-scale demonstration of the businessman's genius for government.
And Henry McElroy seemed to be the ideal man for the task from both
the commercial and political points of view. Bankers, real estate men and
merchants knew him as a shrewd and hard-headed operator, a man who
had started from scratch, understood the value of a dollar and made a
pile. Boss Pendergast knew him as a thoroughly dependable disciple of
Tom Pendergast.

The new administration began with the introduction of the celebrated

i2 4 TOM'S TOWN

McElroy Country Bookkeeping system, which had 'been developed by
the City Manager in the days when he was a storekeeper in Iowa and a
real estate dealer in Kansas City, and which gave the taxpayers the giddy
feeling that they belonged to a solvent concern while at the same time
they supported the machine politicians in unaccustomed style. With a
few swings of his pencil,- McElroy cut in half a five-million-dollar defi-
cit left over from the previous administration' and announced he would
order a slight tax increase to wipe out the remainder of the deficit.

"By this plan the city will get out of its embarrassing position without
the necessity of a $5,000,000 bond issue," the Judge explained. (McElroy
was fond of his former County Court title of Judge and retained it.) And
it was done, or at least nobody had the courage to dispute the Judge's
statement that the city was at last out of the red.

"It's just a little country bookkeeping/* the Judge remarked. He had
started his business life in Dunlap, Iowa, and his proudest achievement
was the accounting method he devised when he was a youth olE seventeen,
clerking in the store there. He worked out a hog-feeding scheme on the
side and by the time he was twenty his books showed a surplus of four
thousand dollars, with which he set up a store of his own.

City Manager McElroy clowned his budget-balancing act a little for
the benefit of the boys who knew and admired him as a wit as well as an
executive, but no one made the mistake of taking the Judge too lightly.
The bankers and other businessmen were not disturbed by his corny
humor or by the touch of magic in his computations when it was com-
bined with the simple arithmetic of honest old Dunlap. The crossroads-
store high-finance hokum perpetuated the legend of McElroy efficiency
for more than a decade. It established Judge McElroy as the business-
man's politician. He played the role vigorously at all times, in big
matters like the deficit and in little affairs like the case of the whelping
dog.

A woman -who was a breeder of fine dogs had a problem in biology
and finances which she took to the City Manager. She explained that she
faced the prospect of a deficit in connection with a female who was sup-
posed to have a litter. The woman had contracted to sell four of the pups
before they arrive^, accepting twenty-five dollars down on each pup.

"Oh 3 you anticipated," McElroy interrupted.

BOOM TIME 125

"I've done worse than that," the woman replied. "I have absconded or
something. Last Friday my little dog had just one pup a son* I've col-
lected twenty-five dollars of the purchase price of three nonexistent pups
and I've spent the money. You see what a fix I'm in. What shall I do?"

The City Hall's financial wizard thought hard,

"I'll tell you what/' he said at length. "Issue anticipation notes for each
pup you owe. Later your little mother will have other sons, maybe. Good
day, Madame."

The Country Bookkeeper did considerable anticipating on his own
account but he was very good at it and no one questioned his financial
wisdom for a long time except Walter Matscheck, the Civic Research In-
stitute director. Several months after McElroy took office the Institute re-
ported in one of its weekly bulletins that the new administration was
spending the people's money at an unbudgetlike rate. The City Man-
ager pooh-poohed the analyst's report and wanted to know where the
hell the Civic Research Institute got the right to butt in on government.
Mr. Matscheck's answer was a series of bulletins showing a mounting
deficit. It was then that Judge McElroy showed some of the other con-
spicuous political talents besides budget-balancing skill. He silenced the
deficit talk temporarily by forcing the Council to order a tax reduction
in the face of rising expenses, and that satisfied the businessmen that the
city had a surplus or high anticipations of one.

Walter Matscheck issued more disconcerting statistics and the Re-
publicans took up the issue for campaign purposes. The Country Book-
keeper stole their thunder by announcing that he was putting up a
one-thousand-dollar personal check, payable to Mercy Children's Hos-
pital if and when anyone could prove the existence of a deficit created
in his administration. Since no one could audit the books without his
consent, he didn't worry about his thousand dollars and continued
to get a balance in his own way. When the deficit eventually was estab-
lished beyond all question it was a figure high in the millions but by that
time the one-thousand-dollar McElroy check wasn't available for cashing.

Mr. Matscheck became the most consistent and effective critic of the
McElroy administration in the first part of its tenure. Although he was
usually able to figure up some .way of distracting the public's attention
from the Matscheck findings, McElroy was nettled at his inability to

I2 6 TOM'S TOWN

silence or ratde the Civic Research Institute man. Walter Matscheck was
a shining exception among critics. Others who got in the way of the lean,
turkey-necked, frostbitten man from Iowa found him both ruthless and
irresistible.

The first important individual to feel the weight of McElroy disfavor
w^s Dr. E. W. Cavaness, the city health director. The good doctor carried
his control of municipal health to the point of decreeing what color
paint should be used on the new nurses* quarters. McElroy favored a
different color. It was a small issue but enough to get the McElroy dander
up and he demanded the health director's resignation. Dr. Cavaness held
out for a while with the support of the medical fraternity but the City
Manager had made up his mind. In addition to having a poor eye for
color, Dr. Cavaness neglected to follow McElroy suggestions in filling
certain hospital' jobs and spending money on contracts.

Dr. Cavaness and the nonpartisan dream went out together. Under
the new charter the health director was not answerable to the city man-
ager but to the Council. With its margin of one vote, the Democratic
majority made the Council a rubber stamp for its Hired Man. "Five to
four" became a monotonous refrain at roll call.

McElroy worked up hardly more than a sweat in eliminating the non-
partisan health director who had defied him. His main attention was
reserved for the Republican police and the Republican mayor. The
Council's Hired Man spent four happy years pre-empting the social and
ceremonial prerogatives of the mayor,, which were about all that was
left of that executive's authority and dignity under the new charter. Al-
though he was immediately eclipsed by the City Manager at the City
Hall, the Mayor supposedly retained his rights to open the baseball sea-
son, shake hands, smile and formally open conventions and hand the
keys to the city to visiting notables. He kept his high silk hat shined and
his swallow-tail coat pressed but didn't realize how few opportunities he
would have to wear them until Queen Marie came to town on her barn-
storming tour in 1926. Then Mayor Beach learned that Judge McElroy
had made his own arrangements for the official welcome and had to
^cuffle to win a place in the Queen's carriage for the parade downtown.
His Honor was th$ victim of an even more grievous slight when Amos 'n
Andy came to'town for their first visit. The Mayor waited at the City

BOOM TIME 127

Hall to greet the radio blackface team, whose personal appearance was a
much greater event than the visit of third-rate European royalty. When
the parade arrived at the City Hall there was the City Manager in the
first limousine with Amos 'n' Andy. He had gone to the station to meet
the comedians and taken all the bows on the long ride to the Hall where
the forlorn mayor waited.

As Andy eloquently expressed it, Mayor Beach was "regusted" so
much so that he abandoned political ambition and pined for the day of
his return to private life. Goaded by the Republican City Central Com-
mittee to assert himself, the Mayor got a running start on the City Man-
ager at the opening game of the American Association baseball season in
1927, racing to the mound with the pitcher's mitt. McElroy glared at
Mayor Beach but restrained himself and accepted the situation. Donning
catcher's mask and glove, he squared off to catch the first ball and sig-
nalled for a fast one right over the plate. Mayor Beach threw a nasty
curve, the ball bouncing and cracking the Judge on the shin. The crowd
roared and Catcher McElroy grinned ferociously at Pitcher Beach as he
rubbed his shin.

The City Manager appropriated the Mayor's office, assigning Beach to
an office behind that of the city clerk. He took away the Mayor's motor
car, which was embarrassing but not as humiliating as it might have
been if the Mayor had not been able to get another car from the Park
Board, the one department which he still controlled. Judge McElroy
elbowed Mayor Beach away from his exclusive position at the head
table at Chamber of Commerce luncheons. If the Mayor was called on
to speak, Judge McElroy also had to be invited to say a few well-chosen
words. At a bridge dedication, the City Manager took the choice spot,
cutting the pretty blue ribbons at the mythical boundary line between
North Kansas City and Kansas City proper, while the Mayor rode in the
rear seat of a motor car far back in the parade. When the new passenger
station a{ the municipal airport was dedicated, Judge McElroy crowded
out the Council as well as the Mayor, staging the whole show for the
city, himself. There was, perhaps, a certain appropriateness in his mo-
nopolizing of the various dedication ceremonies since he represented the
guiding spirit in {he expansive projects requiring tfye presence of an
dfficial dignitary. Kansas City was a-booming at this timeand there was

128 TOM'S TOWN

no greater booster in the movement than the big man to whom Judge
McElroy reported each Sunday at his mansion on Ward Parkway.
McElroy saw to it that credit due Uncle Tom was not appropriated by
Republican stuffed shirts.

When the time for another election rolled around, after four years of
undiluted partisanship. Judge McElroy was just getting warmed up.
There-was some grumbling against him in the ranks of his own party
and much loud Republican talk about McElroyism but absolutely no
prospect that the Country Bookkeeper from Dunlap would be retired.
Tom Pendergast was completely satisfied, as he should have been. McEl-
roy was hiding a deficit, as Walter Matscheck reported, but the city's
credit rated high with bankers and the government managed to meet cur-
rent obligations each month. Contracts for public works and supplies
went to politically favored concerns. Pendergast's Ready-Mixed Concrete
had a monopoly and the prices paid were those fixed by the paving com-
bine, but McElroy diverted public attention from this gouge with his
ballyhoo about the good quality of the materials purchased under the
political system. The merit system provided for in the charter was ig-
nored in the employment of personnel but Judge McElroy was able to
persuade the big taxpayers that the partisan jobholders were giving satis- '
faction on a low wage basis.

The administration exhibited rare skill in promoting and ballyhooing
services that made the maximum impression on the public. It concen-
trated its effort on making a showing in garbage collection, fire protec-
tion, street maintenance, band concerts and budget balancing, and
coipbined these with a few spectacular expansion projects. These last
included the building of a municipal airport and the purchase of two
toll-free bridges over the Missouri, which unquestionably were profit-
able undertakings for the general public as well as the private interests
concerned. The political effectiveness of this course was demonstrated
in the McElroy efficiency reputation. Among other things, it drew the
praise of the Star, which said editorially in 1930:

"For the last four years, with all its faults and failures, Kansas City
probably has had the most efficient city government in its history."

The Judge's greatest achievement probably was the winning of that
indorsement from the old champion of the nonpartisan movement and

BOOM TIME 129.

the G.O.P. The Star was disturbed by the "intrusion of politics/' as the
editorial phrased it, but not unduly alarmed, for the extent of the city
government's deterioration was not yet apparent.

The 'Star at this time was just getting well started on a new phase of
its life, with the Nelson ownership finally at an erid. For the last four
years the new managers of the paper had been somewhat preoccupied
with reorganization problems of their own and with litigation growing
out of purchase of the paper from the Nelson estate. Following the death
of Nelson's daughter, Laura Nelson Kirkwood, in 1926, the paper was
put up for sale under the terms of the Nelson trust which provided that
the Star be disposed of through competitive bidding, with three trustees-
being given fairly wide latitude in selecting the best bid. They accepted
the bid of eleven million dollars, submitted by a stock company that was.
formed by a group of Star editors and advertising executives and limited
to officers and employees of the paper. Walter S. Dickey, publisher of the
Journal and Post, challenged the sale in the courts, contending he had
submitted a higher bid, but the United States Supreme Court upheld the
sale to the Star group.

Although all the figures in the new Star command were Nelson men,,
collectively they lacked the fire and domineering force of old Baron Bill.
There had been steady moderation in the fighting tone of the paper since
the death of Nelson. After the sale in 1926, there was a marked increase
in emphasis on objective reporting in contrast to the angling and color-
ing which had been so conspicuous in the Nelson news coverage. There
was, moreover, an obvious effort to give approximately equal space to
. the arguments of bcteh sides in a political campaign, which was something*
that would have been unbearably painful to Colonel Nelson. However,
despite these changes, the Star still was generally recognizable as a Nel-
son product and any suspicion that its crusading spirit had died was set
at rest in this period by the paper's vigorous campaign against the*
Doherty interests in an effort to get a reduction in gas rates, and by its-
fight on Dr. J. R. Brinkley, the Milford, Kansas, inedical wonder who-
specialized in rejuvenation and compound operations for prostate trouble.

The Star's position in the McElroy matter remained a subject of de-
bate for many years, with many Democrats eventually seeking to give
the Star the chief credit for the City Manager's popular success. John G^

i 3 o TOM'S TOWN

Madden, a Democratic lawyer who was Pendergast's attorney in his days
of trouble, gave a forceful presentation of this point of view in the 1940
campaign, when he said:

"The Star denies that it supported McElroy and put him into office.
However, I want to be fair, even to the Kansas City Star. The plain fact
is that in McElroy and certain of his appointees the Star was deceived.
The citizens of Kansas City were deceived. I do not challenge the good
faith of the Star in believing in McElroy, but the Star cannot challenge
the good faith of the Democratic Party in believing in McElroy. Let us
confess, which is the fact, that however bitterly we opposed McElroy, we
were mesmerized into believing that he was a financial genius, and that
political hypnosis from which we suffered was the product of the praise
of the Kansas City Star"

It is apparent from this plaint that Mr. Madden and his fellow Demo-
crats neglected to read the Star during the last six years of the McElroy
regime but it is true that the early McElroy appeal kept the Star from
giving the G.O.P. in 1930 the special assistance which the Republicans
traditionally had received from the Nelson paper.

Although the Star's neutrality in 1930 constituted a rare example of
nonpartisanship in Kansas City, the editors could have had no illusions
about the future of the nonpartisan cause. There was no Nonpartisan
ticket in the field in 1930 and very little evidence of interest in the non-
political principle. It looked as if the movement fostered by Nelson to
eliminate the party bosses was in the grave with the Baron.

1908 MAIN

THE UNOFFICIAL SEAT of government in Kansas City was the Jackson
Democratic Club at 1908 Main Street, some fifteen blocks south of the
old red-brick building in Market Square where City Manager McElroy
held court daily. Since the downtown had moved away from the anti-
quated City Hall, the new center of municipal authority was more con-
veniently located to carry on the business of the town.

The neighborhood in which Tom Pendergast established his last po-
litical headquarters was a southern extension of the business district, a

BOOM TIME 131

region, of small hotels and restaurants, taverns and stores, wholesale
houses, machine shops, motor car sales-and-accessory plants and freight
offices. It was picked for a larger development when the central railroad
terminal was moved from the West Bottoms to the valley of old O.K.
Creek in 1914. Colonel Nelson moved his Star Building down this way a
couple of years before the Union Station was built on the new site.
Pendergast came along in the mid-twenties, locating his Democratic Club
on Main Street two blocks from the railroad terminals yards. His offices
were two blocks south and two blocks west of the Star Building. Close
to his political club was the plant of his Ready-Mixed Concrete Company
and his wholesale liquor company, revived after Prohibition's repeal, had
quarters a few blocks away. The working public rode past his club every
morning and evening from the South Side to the downtown and North
Side. Strangers arriving in Kansas City passed 1908 Main Street without
noticing it, riding streetcars and busses from the station to the down*
town center.

The Jackson Democratic Club occupied three rooms on the second
floor of a two-story yellow-brick building, flanked on the north by a small
hotel which Pendergast owned. On the first floor were a wholesale linen
shop and an eatery. You climbed stairs to reach the club, entering a
large room, arranged like a lodge hall, which was bare of decoration
except for three pictures on the walls pictures of Woodrow Wilson and
James A. Reed in unnatural companionship,, and a painting of T. J. Pen-
dergast, On the left was an anteroom occupied by a line of people pa-
tiently waiting their turn to go through the doorway of the adjoining
office. The visitors were interviewed briefly by a tall, gray, weatherbeatea
man, Captain Elijah Matheus, former steamboat pilot and Pendergast's
secretary, who escorted each caller into the presence of the club's founder.

The line moved fast for Pendergast was quick with his answers to his
public.

"All right, who's next," he called out when the door opened to let one
caller out and another in.

A framed cartoon of Alderman Jim Pendergast carrying a ballot box,
an old caricature from, the Star, looked down on Pendergast as he sat at
his desk handling the business of the town. The cartoon was the one
political touch in the office. The whole aspect o the place and the big

i 3 2 TOM'S TOWN

man at the desk suggested that this was a business operation rather than
a political activity. It was, in fact, big business. From this unpretentious
headquarters Pendergast directed a large, smoothly functioning organ-
ization of precinct captains, block workers, party leaders and officials, a
company that worked 365 days of the year. The thoroughness of the
system was explained once in a few words to a visiting British woman
member of Parliament, who was curious to see a real American boss in
the flesh and arranged an interview. She was received by the Goat leader
in his Ready-Mixed Concrete office and found herself facing a brisk busi-
nessman.

"Tell me something of the system of your organization," she said. "Is
it by the bloc or how?"

"Yes," replied Tom, with no attempt at humor. "The block system.
We're organized in every block in the city."

This visiting member of Parliament, Miss Marjorie Graves, would
have learned, if she had pressed the Boss for further details, that the
system combined features of a corporation and a military organization.
There was one worker for every five voters and the command or inner
circle includ5Tward leaders, township leaders and a group of business
and professional men. The organization had an espionage service that
included thousands of volunteer reporters, ~~-~

Mr. Pendergast conducted affairs at 1908 Main in such a manner that
it only occasionally occurred to the people that this was a very odd way
to run a democracy. The thing that was mostly said about the Jackson
Democratic Club manager was that he got things done. A piece of paper
from him, marked with his distinctive red pencil and containing the brief
request to add the bearer*s name to the payroll "and oblige," cut
.through all red tape. Businessmen saw him there as an important execu-
tive who understood all the practical details of his own enterprises and
.got to the heart of their problems with a few direct questions. Small fry
saw him as the influential citizen who was interested in their affairs the
big man who had a use for them, the head of an organization that
operated on a mutual benefit basis. ,

Pendergast's influence in placing deserving workers was not limited
to public employment. There were numerous companies and individuals
who acted promptly on a Pendergast recommendation. During periods

BOOM TIME 133

when the Democrats did not control political patronage or when the
pickings were slim for other reasons, the Goat leader had found his
connections with private employers of extreme importance in sustain-
ing his organization. After the Democrats returned to power and his-
voice became the dominant one in deciding who should get the jobs and
the favors, T.J. did not abandon his interest in commercial operators
who were anxious to cultivate good relations with the organization by
helping out the boys.

In campaign time the opposition operators drew a lurid picture of the
Boss as a sinister figure pulling the strings of hidden government, but
the fact of the matter was that the machine rule wasn't hidden and the
legend of Pendergast that grew up at 1908 Main Street was quite unlike
anything in the stock of the old political melodrama. In this time the
people had become so accustomed to the indequacy of the official govern-
ment machinery which they had established that they accepted the Pen-
dergast kind of administration as a normal and even indispensable
service. The Boss was able to operate openly, without apology, and he
busied himself making a reputation as a substantial citizen the man
of property, the good family man, the friend of the masses, the Jacksoniaa
of large simplicities who hadn't been spoiled by wealth.

He arose each morning at five o'clock, went direct to 1908 Main or to
his Ready-Mixed Concrete office, and was occupied until six o'clock in
the evening. Three mornings each week he sat at his desk at 1908 Main,
meeting the public. He didn't leave his office for lunch, for he belonged
to no clubs except his own political society and looked with disdain on
"resolutin' bodies," as he called the clubs in the businessmen's luncheon
circuit. A tray containing plain food was sent up to the Boss from the
little restaurant below his office. In the afternoon Pendergast moved to
his Ready-Mixed office. As the pressure of political callers became heavier,
the Goat leader had one of his lieutenants sit in for him at 1908 Main
three days a week. One of his frequent substitutes was Jim Pendergast^
son of brother Mike, who was being trained to take over the Goat scepter/

Pendergast seldom left his home at night, except to go to a movie witk
his children, and usually was in bed by nine o'clock. His main recreation
was an occasional motor car ride into the country with a friend or a
member of his family. His favorite ride wound over the' highways

i 34 TOM'S TOWN

through the Clay County hills north of Kansas City, a picturesque region
in which he purchased a large country estate with ample stables and
pastures for his race horses.

Pendergast made so many friends through his interviews and services
at 1908 Main Street that the picture of him in his headquarters was
spread widely by word of mouth and became familiar to thousands of
citizens who never saw him outside the newspaper photographs. He
gave a good account of himself in newspaper interviews. Newspaper-
men found him both formidable and attractive. His brusqueness
was a part of his restless energy. He was seldom relaxed. He sat for*
ward on the edge of his chair when he talked, emphasizing his remarks
with forceful gestures. He was all business dynamic, plain spoken,
impatient. This was the impression he made on Geo.rge K. Wallace,
the Star's Missouri correspondent, who covered the Pendergast assign-
ment over a long period, including the years when the paper was doing
its heaviest fighting against the organization. Wallace called often at
1908 Main, went with Pendergast to state and national conventions,
talked to him long distance in various cities and even aboard a liner
at sea, traveled to New York, Chicago and other places for interviews
in times when things were popping in the Democratic leader's absence.

To the reporter from the Republican anti-boss newspaper the gruff
Democratic boss was always accessible and courteous. Newspaper oppo-
sition was a part of the political game and he didn't mix personalities
with his business. His attitude was summed up in one of his informal
remarks to the reporter.

"Mr. Wallace," he said, "there. are three sides to every question in
politics your side, my side and the right side."

Which isn't the statement of an altogether simple man.

With the growth of his wealth and power, Big Tom was forced to
deviate somewhat from his simple routine. His wife and children wanted
to spend some of the new money and the good family man indulged
them. He was intensely proud -of his family, his wife, their son and two
daughters, and was gratified af the quiet way in which they conducted
themselves. They sought no exotic adventures and engaged in none of
the escapades that were popular with people of their privileged position.

BOOM TIME 135

Outside of exhibiting a delight in display of luxurious possessions, they
conducted themselves about as modestly as Big Tom himself. He spent
$175,000 to purchase and furnish an ornate home on Kansas City's fash-
ionable Ward Parkway. He bought flashy sports roadsters for his older
daughter and son, and lavished silks, furs and diamonds on his wife. He
also dressed himself more smartly, for he always had a strong taste for
style. He favored blue and gray tailor-made ensembles, picked nobby
hats and was fond of wearing spats.

Tom's sartorial improvement drew statewide attention when he blos-
somed forth in top hat and cutaway at his older daughter's wedding in
1929. Miss Marceline Pendergast was spliced to a prominent local butch-
er's son, W. E. Burnett, Jr., with all the proper trimmings and with T. J.
holding the spotlight. He posed jauntily beside the bride in the wedding
picture, which was a political mistake. The Republicans made five thou-
sand prints of the photograph of Tom in his elegant getup and scattered
them over the state in the following election campaign. It was more effec-
tive than a cartoon, for Tom's resemblance to a figure from a Nast car-
toon of a political tycoon was remarkable. The Goat leader quietly
swallowed his chagrin and thereafter restrained his fashionable inclina-
tions.

The wedding incident was preceded by an equally spectacular exhibi-
tion of the Pendergasts' pleasure in rich adornment. Several weeks earlier
robbers had broken into the home and made off with jewels, furs and
other articles of personal attire valued at $150,000. The loot included
numerous baubles ranging in value from $1,100 to $13,750 and 480 pairs
of silk stockings that had been assembled for the trousseau of the bride-
to-be.

The family used their surplus for other of the customary pleasures of
the leisured class. One of their favorite pastimes was travel, and their
greatest adventure was a trip abroad with Tom in the summer of 1927*
They made the Grand Tour. The Kansas City boss enjoyed all of the
journey except the passage from London to Paris, which was made by
plane. "Flying is not what it is cracked up to be," he remarked upon
his return. Pendergast kept his followers informed of his progress abroad
by postcards. One of his missives which has been preserved sheds inter-
esting light on the sentimental quality of this famous tourist and his re-

136 TOM'S TOWN

lationship to the boys back home. Dated Hotel de I'Univers, Tours,
France, and addressed to "all members" at 1908 Main, it read:

As it is impossible to write to all members, I am taking this means of letting
you all know that I think of all at some time or other on my trip, and I can
truthfully subscribe to the old adage, "Distance makes the heart grow fonder."

My family and I are having a wonderful time. We have all enjoyed the best
of health and have toured through England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and
found the rural parts very lovely; the cities not so good, with the exception of
London, which is very large and very busy; traffic about as congested as New
York, but not as well regulated.

We flew to Paris from London. I do not think I would do it again. The
noise from the engines was deafening and our ears rang for twenty-four hours
afterward.

Paris is truly a wonder city. We spent eight days there and were treated
with every consideration by all. I found no evidence of bitterness or price
gouging.

When he returned ^ to Kansas City after an absence of about three
months, Pendergast was received in the manner of an oriental potentate
coining back to his realm. Crowds gathered at the Union Station to greet
him and followed him to 1908 Main Street. His office was stacked with
baskets of cut flowers and the boss spent several hours meeting well-
wishers, shaking hands, answering questions, until he grew weary and
Went home to rest only to return in the evening for more flattering treat-
ment. Touched by the demonstration of devotion and cheered by first
reports on the situation at home in his absence, he remarked:

"A reporter met me on the ship in New York and told me of the awful
state of aF airs out here. He did not scare me one bit. I told him I would
bet any odds he liked to name it was just the outs trying to put ignominy
upon the ins, and that I had played that game myself many a time. I get
home and find things fine."

Mr. Pendergast thereupon delivered one of his longest public state-
ments, and one that contained his most cogent expression of his political
and business philosophy. \

"The New York reporters told me there was a paving combine here in
Kansas City," he said. "I told them if there was it was twenty-five years
old and no Democratic invention. They know that as well as we do,

<e Another bunch howled because I have my name on Ready-Mixed

BOOM TIME 137

Concrete wagons. So I have. I live here, am in business here, own prop-
erty here, pay all my taxes here. Does any man say I have not a right to
try to make a living here? My business right now is selling Ready-Mixed
Concrete. I am selling all of it I can to anybody I can induce to buy it,
and in that particular I am exactly like the maker of sewer pipe, or vitri-
fied brick, or tiling or any other material. They all hustle for business.

"Let me say something: If everybody would hustle for business like I
do and others who compete with me do, this would be a livelier town
than it is. I am for more and better and bigger business, from Ready-
Mixed Concrete to ice cream cones.

"Everything honest and legitimate goes with business or politics,"
he concluded.

Pendergast's capacities as a businessman had been shown from the
beginning but for a long time were not widely recognized outside his
intimate circle because of his inclination to run things from a quiet nook
in the background and because his renown as a politician diverted public
attention from his other activities. As a young man, he was marked as a
comer in business as well as politics when he and Cas Welch, his personal
friend and factional rival, joined forces to form a messenger-boy mo-
nopoly, merging the Hasty, Hurry and Speedy services into an enterprise
that eliminated rivals through the combined brawn of Tom and Cas.
In'his days as a saloonkeeper, Tom had three saloons on Twelfth Street
at various times and quickly branched into the wholesale liquor line, be-
coming president of the company which he operated until shortly before
Prohibition. When he sold out he had the foresight to make a large in-
vestment in warehouse receipts and was in position to cash in with
bonded stuff after repeal. After selling his liquor interests he organized
a distributing company that handled nonalcoholic beverages. He had a
hand in the insurance business and teamed up with his friend and po-
litical shadow, Emmet O'Malley, in a cigar 'company, serving as vice- ,
president. ^ ~ T '

"~"&3terMr. Pendergast took over the Ready-Mixed Concrete operation,
the Kansas City paving combine faced only one serious challenge from
an outsider. A Tulsa, Oklahoma, contractor by the name of Carl Pleasant
tried to horn in, with unpleasant results for himself. The Tulsa con-
tractor was a Jayhawker by birth, a former football star at the University

BOOM TIME 139

achievement was somewhat chilled by the fact that they got outside
financial interests to exploit their product. And then Mr. Overly's
sensitive nostrils brought complaints which compelled the city health
director to hold hearings. Finally the company announced it was moving
its plant to Trenton, New Jersey, so it could do business without expen-
sive litigation. The incident provoked a brief flurry of interest and was
forgotten until it was recalled by the vast wartime expansion in the syn-
thetic rubber industry, when it was found that Thiokol was booming
on government contracts.

The Republicans, of course, attempted to make some political capital
of the Pleasant and Thiokol incidents and Pendergast's Ready-Mixed was
one of their principal talking points in the campaigns of 1930. Their
efforts, alas, did not make a great impression on the public, which could
see that Tom Pendergast was not alone in the monopoly game and was
made cynical by the Democratic propaganda that the Republicans
were sore only because they were on the outside looking in. The citizens
talked and thought less about the ruthlessness of Pendergast's methods
than they did about the size of his take. His profits from his part in
the concrete monopoly were estimated at five. Jiuudr^d. _ thousand
dollars in a good year, twojmndred thousand* 3ollar&irL a lean one. That
kind" of money 'demanded and got respect for a man, in the society
of hustlers.

Mayor Beach injected Pendergast's business interests into the 1930
campaign by propounding six questions to the City Manager, asking
him to reveal the amount of business done with Pendergast concerns
and suggesting that he comment on the propriety of such traffic with
the leader of the party controlling the city government.

The humorist who occupied the city manager's office replied that
all the work had been done according to plans and specifications. The
Mayor continued his agitation until he irritated the county attorney >
James R. Page, a member of the Pendergast faction, who demanded
that Beach put up the evidence for his charges and insinuations, or
shut up.

A county grand jury, which was meeting at this time, decided that
it ought to take some notice of the paving issue. It took a quick look
and dropped the matter with the announcement that neither the Mayor

140 TOM'S TOWN

nor the Prosecutor offered any evidence which warranted further in-
vestigation. Moreover, the report said, the jury felt that the inquiry into
Mr. Pendergast's affairs had "a distinct political aspect and as such would
jeopardize the dignity of this court."

The Goat rhetoricians could always be counted on for a laugh.

HOME RULE

HOME RULE had a good democratic sound but after a few years' experi-
ence with the new Democratic administration it suggested only Mc-
Elroy-Pendergast oppression to Republicans and Nonpartisans. Home
Rule actually meant substitution of local control for state authority
over the Police Board. Republicans and Nonpartisans had taken the
lead in agitation for this measure of autonomy in earlier days when the
state administrations were consistently dominated by the Democratic
Party. The Pendergast Democrats were satisfied with the arrange-
ment that placed the appointive power over the board in' the governor's
hands until the Republicans began electing Missouri governors and
legislatures. Then the positions of the rival politicians on the Home
Rule question naturally were reversed.

The new city charter did not change the status of the Police and
Election boards. Republican direction of the Police Department re-
mained the one missing link in the machine chain and so long as
there was a Republican governor in Jefferson City there appeared to
be no prospect of a change in the Kansas City police power. However,
the Republicans had no feeling of security in this situation, arid City
Manager McElroy added immeasurably to their alarm with his measures
in reviving the Home Rule agitation. His offensive was a double-bar-
relled affair, consisting of elaborate harassment of the Republican police
together with defiance of the law under which the department oper-
ated, combined with a movement in the Legislature to substitute a
McElroy-written law for the old police statute.

In. an effort to hold their last line against 'Pendergast in the city,
the GXXP. leaders wrestled desperately with the dual problem of in-
creasing crime and police inefficiency, A series of reform police chiefs

BOOM TIME 141

were introduced, each being rapidly eliminated by political interference
and new explosions from the underworld. The contest reached its height
with the coming of Major John L. Miles, the crusading peace officer
from old Independence. His appointment grew out of agitation led
by the Star, which temporarily impressed the G.O.P. politicians that
they must relax partisan management of the police in order to meet
the emergency created by the crime situation and the Democratic attack
on the department.

Major Miles served in the First World War as commanding officer
of 'Battery A of the One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Field Artillery.
One of his brother officers was Harry S. Truman, captain of Battery D
in the same regiment. They were old friends. When they returned from
the war both entered politics at about the same time. Miles as a Republi-
can and Truman as a Democrat, with the backing of American Legion
members, veterans of the One Hundred and Twenty-ninth who went
through the fire in France with Miles and Truman. That group of
Jackson County men formed loyalties while they were in uniform that
transcended party interest and had important consequences for both
Jackson County and the nation: Harry Truman scratched the Demo-
cratic ticket for the only known time in his career in order to vote
for Miles when he first ran for office.

Major Miles, like Truman, came from solid Jackson County stock.
A son of the soil, product of a long line of Fundamentalists, he mani-
fested a reformist zeal that was perhaps stronger than his political am-
bitions. He was elected county marshal in 1920 when he was the rural
champion in the crusade headed by Governor Arthur M. Hyde and
the Star. Four years later, when the office of county marshal was abol-
ished, Miles was elected sheriff in the same campaign that brought
Truman his first and only political reversal. That was the election in
which Shannon and Bulger bolted the party and the future President,,
who was running for re-election to the County Court, went down with
the rest of the Democratic ticket.

As marshal and sheriff, Miles did as much as one man possibly could,
do to keep the automobile from bringing the city's vices to the country.

The magnitude of the Miles undertaking in Kansas City was ob-
served arid neatly summarized by a neutral reporter, a young English-

142 TOM'S TOWN

man who came to town in the summer of -192^0 make a polite survey
of the state of civilization in the Heart of America. The visitor was
Alfred P. Perry of London, a guest on the staff of the Star. He was a
junior fellow of the Walter Hines Page Fellowship in journalism, a
hopeful enterprise designed to promote Anglo-American understand-
ing and world peace. Mr. Perry composed a couple of pieces on the
hopelessly complicated international problem and thereafter devoted
his attention to more interesting subjects, such as the races at Pender-
gast's Riverside Park, the new skyscrapers, motor cars, luxurious hotel
accommodations, the Kansas wheat crop and the shows on Twelfth
Street. The two aspects of the Kansas City picture that impressed him
most were the beauty of the newer residential districts and the crime
situation,

After a tour of the Country Club district on the South Side, the
man from London concluded he was in one of the world's garden
spots. Then he turned to the North Side, passing block after block of
dingy business buildings and slum dwellings on the way to the City
Hall and police headquarters, where he interviewed Chief Miles, ex-
amined records and took notes for a well-mannered little essay on crime.
/"Last year eighty-nine persons were murdered in this city," he wrote.
^'During those twelve months three murderers were sentenced to be
hanged, four were sentenced to life imprisonment and six were given
terms which averaged fourteen years each. In England, with a pop-
ulation more than eighty times as great, seventeen persons were mur-
dered in the same length of time. Of the murderers, thirteen were
hanged and four were sent to penal servitude for life; two cases remained
Unsolved at the end of the year.

"In 1927 Kansas City outdid Chicago with a murder rate of sixteen
for each 100,000 population, compared with 13.3 for the latter city; and
jtast year holdups totaled 1,178 and burglaries 1,142, or an average of
more than sevenjrrimes a day,

"Such a record scarcely can be described as flattering. Although it
would be unjust to attribute this condition of affairs solely to police
inefficiency, I gained the impression a disproportionate amount of time
and energy was being expended on the pursuit of petty misdemeanors
to the detriment of the more serious duties of public safety.

BOOM TIME 143

"It is an error to which all police are liable," the British reporter
tactfully concluded, "and one from which the London department is
by no means exempt."

Mr. Perry of London unwittingly picked up one of the main argu-
ments of the new Home Rule advocates with his statement that "a
disproportionate amount of time and energy was being expended on
the pursuit of petty misdemeanors." The "petty misdemeanors" were
liquor and gambling violations and Chief Miles's concentration on
these infractions violated the major premise of the machine govern-
ment's theory of crime control. The Home Rule Utopians had a beauti-
fully simple theory designed to solve the whole crime problem. They
envisaged an orderly and happy society in which gamblers flourished,
speakeasies and night clubs thrived, bootleggers and rumrunners kept
their appointments without fear of interruption, while bandits, hi-j ackers,
burglars, thieves and murderers were suppressed. The reasoning behind
this philosophy was that the liquor and gambling industries would
operate under any circumstances, and it was better to have them reg-
ulated by responsible people under the eye of government than to have
them conducted by enemies of constituted authority. Further, it was
felt that if these petty misdemeanors were overlooked, the vice traffic
would absorb the principal energies of the people who customarily get
into trouble and thus would reduce the opportunity and incentive for
the rough stuff like bank holdups. In return for the co-operation from
government, the gambling and syndicate owners would work to dis-
courage and discipline the more rambunctious spirits of the night and
the police would thus have full time to concentrate on traffic, robbery
and homicide regulation.

Some critics of the Home Rule theory -could see the merit of the
argument that means must be found to make the law square with the
prevailing social habits of the city but didn't think that nullification
of the law was the way to go about it. Only a change in the form of
the law and progress in social education could bring about sane reg-
ulation of the liquor and gambling traffic. The notion that divekeepers
could be induced to co-operate in discouraging major crime, or that
they would be able to do anything iri that direction even if they were
so minded, seemed childish to anyone who looked at the daily report

144 TOM'S TOWN

of bank failures and bank lootings, car thefts, filling station and theater
robberies, hi-jackings, stink bomb thro wings, dynamitings, window
breakings and arson racket operations. None the less, this theory was
seriously entertained by a considerable number of individuals in places
of political power and by a much larger number of simple citizens,
most of whom honestly wanted to see a more sensible and decent order
of affairs.

Even if he had been inclined to look tolerantly on gambling and
boozing, Chief Miles could not have classed these misdemeanors as
petty, for any honest police officer could see that the gambling and
liquor rackets were the main supports of the crime industry, and the
whole underworld gravitated around the speakeasy and the gambling
dive. The pay-off from the games and joints was the main source of
, political corruption for official protection.

Chief Miles was not dismayed by the size of his task and indeed he
was so successful in his efforts to enforce respect for Prohibition and
antigambling laws that he produced a revolt on Twelfth Street and
in other centers of liberal sentiment. The Chief did not give all of his
time to suppressing petty misdemeanors, although at times it seemed
that he was devoting twenty-four hours a day to this uplift. He was
an intelligent and capable police officer, who brought both military
discipline and a stern moral code to the department. He set about
modernizing his organization, following some of the suggestions made
by a police expert who was imported to make a survey of the Kansas
City system. Many technical improvements in the department were
introduced and some civil service standards were set up for the employ-
ment and training of officers.

It was true, however, that the Chief took more pleasure in raiding
than in his other work, and his actions in personally leading the raiding
squad marked him as a grandstander, exposing him to popular de-
rision and making him vulnerable to the charge that he spent too much
time on small-time outlawry. His sad experience in this field of en-
deavor was illustrated by his marathon contest with the East Side
Musicians Club, a Twelfth Street institution maintained by a company
of distinctive Negro boogie-woogie and jazz artists. Miles, who had no
appreciation for true Jackson County rhythm, insisted that the band-

BOOM TIME 145

men's clubhouse was a gambling establishment rather than a musical
hall and nightly sent out his raiding squad to break up the entertain-
ment. His men made hundreds of arrests but failed to obtain evidence
that resulted in one conviction. After the ninety-seventh raid the musi-
cians' president. Doc Fojo, announced plans to serenade the police on
their one hundredth raid, offering to play for the Chief a special ar-
rangement of "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby."

By this time Chief Miles had had a number of other experiences that
convinced him the Kansas Citians would never attain his Independence
standard of virtue. Among other things, he found that a petition was
being circulated, under the direction of the Democratic opposition, ask-
ing for his removal as an oppressive official.

City Manager McElroy put his heart into the business of baiting Miles,
and he found that the flexible nonpartisan charter gave him consider-
able power to interfere with and embarrass the police while he was
waiting for the turn of events that would bring complete Democratic
control. He began by objecting to the size of the police budget, arbi-
trarily refusing to pay certain expense bills of Chief Miles and other
items. He held up the wages of policemen for months at a time, upset
the police benefit fund and otherwise demoralized the department. He
made an issue over a bill for fifteen dollars for flowers for a slain officer
and staged a hammy comedy act over a clothes cleaning bill for the
police. To one touching plea for money needed to pay the police wages,
he replied with a letter advising that the officers be fed castor oil.

The Police Board went to the courts in a mandamus action to com-
pel the city to accept their budget estimates and release the needed funds.
McElroy forced the litigation into a long series of hearings before a
commissioner of the court. These hearings were carried to four dif-
ferent cities to collect testimony showing how towns of like size han-
dled the budget matter. This became known as the See America First
Tour, cost the city about fifty thousand dollars, and produced noth-
ing much of importance except some wry entertainment for the
taxpayers. High point of the hearings was a debate over the question
1 of whether the court could consider population figures taken from the,
Encyclopaedia Britannica, counsel for the police objecting because
the Encyclopaedia was a British work dedicated to King George V and

146 TOM'S TOWN

the authors could not be produced in court to verify their statements.
After this frivolous performance had been carried to the point where
everybody was bored with the whole business, the Commissioner found
against the Police Board but he was overruled by the State Supreme
Court, which held that the board had the right to fix its own budget.
However, the City Manager was not long depressed by that reversal,

McElroy and the police commissioners were in the midst of this fight
over the budget when the underworld undertook an operation which
called national attention to the fact that the Kansas City situation was
out of hand and impressed everyone that neither the Miles system nor
the Home Rule theory was adequate to deal with it. This crime was a
kidnaping, which ftiarked the inception of the extortion racket as a
national menace and which had a significant relationship to the so-called
minor lawbreaking which Chief Miles so earnestly tried to break up.
The kidnapers and torture bandits were a by-product of the illicit
liquor and gambling traffic, trained for their work in the hi-jacking and
gangland ride of the beer and alcohol wars under Prohibition. The booze
and gambling industries produced such rich profits that the bolder ad-
venturers of the underworld began to prey on the successful traffickers.
The syndicate operators were particularly vulnerable to this attack be-
cause of their position outside the law and their adherence to the under-
world code of silence.

The ransom gangsters of the Prohibition nightmare were at first
called tape bandits because of their habit of taping the eyes and mouths
of their victims. They seized a man, taped and- bound him, tortured
ahd threatened him with death until he or his friends paid the amount
demanded for his release. Or they killed him. The tape bandits began
by kidnaping bootleggers and gamblers. The people who survived these
ordeals were too frightened or too smart to talk above whispers. Em-
boldened by their success, the tape bandits turned their attention to
larger game to wealthy businessmen and their wives and children
until they were finally suppressed by the G-men of the F.B.I.

The rise of this sinister business was traced in a series of unsolved
murders and rumored kidnapings of underworld figures that occurred
over a period of two years in Kansas City.

Then came the mo$t ambitious raid of the terrorists, which shattered

BOOM TIME 147

what little was left of the city's peace. Political bickering over the police
question and McElroyism had reached -f ever point in the city election
campaign of March, 1930, which the tape bandits chose as a propitious
time for their big show. It began with an alarm at the home and the
office of the Kansas City boss.

T. J. Pendergast was in his office at 1908 Main Street the morning
of March 18, 1930, when he received a frantic telephone message from
his wife reporting that their son, Tom, Jr., had been kidnaped. The
Democratic boss reacted to this stunning announcement with an ex-
plosiveness that alarmed his associates and paralyzed normal activity
at 1908 Main. Two men from the North Side were summoned to
Pendergast's office and arrived in a rush. They were tough and resource-
ful individuals who knew the characters and the customs of the under-
world. Showing the strain under which he labored, the Goat leader told
them of his son's disappearance and gave them just two hours in which
to return him safely to his family. When these men attempted to explain
that they knew nothing of the case and that they needed more than
two hours for their search, Pendergast lost his temper and struck out
furiously with his fists, knocking down one of the men and slugging
the other one so hard that he reeled into a door, breaking the glass.

Well within the two-hour limit, eighteen-year-old Tom, Jr., was found,
for he had not been kidnaped. He was discovered sitting in his class-
room at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, unaware of the incident that
had caused the excitement over him.

The false alarm had its origin in a mysterious happening at about
nine-thirty o'clock in the morning, on Ward Parkway, almost in front
of the Pendergast home. Roy T. Collins, a building contractor, was
alone in his car approaching War4 Parkway from an intersecting street
when: he observed what plainly was a holdup and kidnaping. A Pack-
ard sports roadster, occupied .by one man and driving north toward
the downtown section, was forced to the curb and stopped by two
men in a Chrysler coupe. One of the bandits leaped to the running board
of the Packard, struck the driver over the head with a revolver butt
or a blackjack, climbed in and took over the wheel, forcing his victim
to the floor. Then the two cars roared away.

Two patrolmen A. E. Perrine and Charles Connell were standing

148 TOM'S TOWN

at the patrol box on the corner near where the kidnaping occurred.
They were calling their police station and did not see the crime that
was committed less than half a block away. The one witness, Collins,
notified the officers o the incident and the police made some quick
deductions that produced pain and embarrassment for all concerned.
Because the Pendergast home was so close to the scene of the abduction,
and because young Tom drove a Packard of the same model (but a dif-
ferent color) as the one Mr. Collins had seen, the officers figured the
youth was the victim of either a kidnaping or a college hazing stunt.
They called on Mrs. Pendergast, produced the scare that upset 1908^
Main Street and retired from the case in confusion while Boss Tom
expressed relief over his son's safety in colorful language describing
Republican police inefficiency.

For five days the hold-up on Ward Parkway remained a mystery to
the police and the general public. Then the Star obtained the details,
scooping both the newspaper opposition and the authorities.

This kidnaping was obviously the work of an outside gang although
there was at least one Kansas City hand in the operation. Some one who
knew a great deal about Kansas City and Twelfth Street planned the
crime. All the big-time kidnapings of the 1930*5 were sensational, com-
bining equal parts of horror and tragedy, but few were quite as orig-
inal in conception or as expert in direction as the Katz case. The victim
was the younger of two regionally famous brothers, Ike and Mike Katz,
owners of a chain of drugstores that grew from a confectionary store
on old Union Avenue. Their offices were in a building less than .a
block away from the place on Twelfth Street where ransom negotiations
for the release of Mike Katz were conducted.

The setting for the opening scene and the timing were remarkable
enough, but what followed was even more of a departure from the
routine crime and it was all carried out with the precision and suspense
of a well-rehearsed stage play. Michael Katz was seized in his car four
blocks from his Ward Parkway home shortly before nine-thirty in
the inorning, while driving on the east side of a well-traveled two-
lane boulevard lined with the large homes of the best-protected people
in the towrL An hour or so later, two Twelfth Street figures were drafted
to play unwilling parts as go-betweens, and the drama shifted to a

BOOM TIME 149

room in a small Twelfth Street hotel in the heart of the business section.

Benny Portman, gambler and bootlegger, received a telephone call to
go to Republican First District headquarters on West Twelfth. There
he was met by an armed stranger who gave him an envelope addressed
to Louis (Kid) Rose, manager of the Sexton Hotel between Main Street
and Baltimore Avenue on Twelfth Street. Inside the envelope was a
note o instructions to Rose and a letter addressed to Ike Katz, which
contained the ransom demand in Mike Katz's handwriting. Rcise,
a former pugilist, at first refused to let himself become involved in the
case but changed his mind after listening twice to a threatening voice
on the telephone. Ike Katz and two associates hurried to the hotel late
in the afternoon and soon afterward the telephone rang in a fourth-
floor room of the Sexton, opening the bidding for the life of Mike Katz.
It began at twenty-five thousand dollars and continued until three
o'clock the next afternoon, when the weary negotiators accepted the
kidnapers' term one hundred thousand dollars or nothing. The gang's
agent on the telephone lost patience at one stage of the negotiations
when forty thousand dollars was offered. "Say, keep your forty," the
muffled voice said, "Well bring him home for nothing."

After the final terms were arranged, Portman and Rose left the hotel
with one hundred thousand dollars in bills wrapped in a newspaper.
They were shadowed to their rendezvous with the kidnapers and
directed by telephone along the way. Following orders, they stopped
at another* hotel, the Coates House on Broadway, where they waited
in the* lobby until Rose was paged for a telephone call at a booth in the
hotel lobby. That call directed them to old Reservoir Hill, a rugged
eminence rising above Cliff Drive on the Missouri River bluffs in the
northeast part of the city. They parked their car on the top of the lonely
- hill and walked away from it, as instructed. They didn't look back when
they heard a motor car roar up to their parked machine, pause and
dash away. When they returned the bundle of bills they had left in
the front seat of the car was gone.

Returning to the hotel, Rose and Portman resumed their vigil with
,two representatives of the Katz family. Three hours passed. The tele-
phone rang five times in that interval, each time with a report from

I5 o TOM'S TOWN

the kidnapers that there had been a delay. At seven-fifteen, when the
cover of night had descended and the watchers in the hotel had about
abandoned hope, the final call came in. "All right," said the muffled
voice. "Go to the Concourse. Your man is waiting there for you now."

At that moment Mike Katz was sitting on a bench in the colonnade of
the Concourse, a small park above Cliff Drive in a northeast residential
district which once had been a fashionable center. His head and face
were covered by a hood and he sat quietly. He had been instructed not
to remove his hood for five minutes and he patiently counted off the
time. No one disturbed him. A street car clattered by and a few motor
cars rolled past on the boulevard near the colonnade but their drivers did
not notice the dark figure on the bench. After several minutes Mr. Katz
lifted the hood from his head but did not stir from his seat in the recess of
the colonnade. This was his first view in nearly thirty-four hours, dur-
ing which his eyes had been either taped or covered by a hood while
he was held a prisoner in two different houses. He still was dazed when
a motor car roared up with his rescuers and he took his first steps
as a free man again.

The people read the details of the Katz experience along with reports
of the Democratic organization's victory in the election o mayor and
Council. The election was a spirited affair two G.O.P. workers were
kidnaped and Republican police officers made off with a Democrat and
beat him over the head with blackjacks but the election disorders were
comparatively petty matters. The Democrats made a clean sweep -of
the city offices by a majority of twenty-five thousand, winning every
Council seat. Boss Pendergast took two thirds of the patronage and
3oss Shannon, who had returned to the fold, got one third. Even the
most optimistic Democrats were surprised at the results but the rejoic-
ing of the Goats and the Rabbits was cut short in the crisis provoked
by the Katz kidnaping. For a week or so it appeared that the under-
world had at last forced a showdown, arousing the leading citizens
to a revolt against politicians in an effort to correct the system which
encouraged criminals.

The businessmen's answer to the challenge of the ransom terrorists
was delivered at a mass meeting directed by the Chamber of Commerce,

BOOM TIME 151

at which the leading politicians and law enforcement officials sat down
with the bankers and merchants to frame a rousing declaration of
war on the underworld. The vigilante spirit of the old committee-of-
safety days ran high and a rope party might easily have been organized
if the businessmen had known just who ought to be hanged first.

Chief speaker at the meeting was James R. Page, the county prose-
cutor, who rose to oratorical heights. "These are dark days of crime
and brigandage in Kansas City," said the Prosecutor. "Let public senti-
ment be aroused."

Then Mr. Page said a curious thing. "Fd rather have the vote of the
humblest Republican on earth than all the Democratic bandits out of
hell," he exclaimed with heat. His remark was greeted with a roar for
it was plain that he was aiming at a North Side element in the Demo-
cratic organization with which he had clashed previously.

"Who is the ally of this organized criminal element in Kansas City?"
Mr. Page asked. "Who is the Big Shot?" The crowd grew tense, wonder-
ing if the prosecutor was going to name names.

"I say the ally is the politician, the crooked lawyer and the professional
bondsman," he shouted. "And that goes for both political parties."

The speech thus ended as an indictment of the whole system, and
while no one could ^question the accuracy and justice of the charge
that fixers in both parties were guilty of dealing with the criminal, this
conclusion had a somewhat anticlimactic and chilling effect. It left the
citizens with a depressing realization of the magnitude of the task
they faced, and no particular idea of where to begin.

The Katz case remains to this day a mystery in the files of the Kansas
City authorities. Chance played a strange part in the brief investigation
that followed Mr. Katz's release. Two St. Louis criminals were arrested
when the car in which they were riding was wrecked on a Missouri
highway and it was learned the car had been purchased in Kansas City
with some 6f the marked ransom bills. The St. Louis characters had
an alibi, of course, and were dismissed after Mr. Katz, who said he had
been blindfolded throughout his imprisonment, was unable to identify
them. The investigation suffered a further setback through the abrupt
removal of due stool pigeon on whom the police were depending for

i 5 2 TOM'S TOWN

information. His death apparently was not induced by a gangster's
bullet but by a heart attack resulting from overindulgence in narcotics.
To satisfy public indignation over this untimely intrusion of fate, the
chief of detectives was reduced to a patrolman's beat and that unfor-
tunate scapegoat soon thereafter died, also of a heart attack.

Last repercussion of the kidnaping was the resignation of Police Chief
Miles. Bert S. Kimbrell, the member of the Police Board who had
backed Miles in his unpopular crusading, stepped out with him. The
Republicans kept control of the police for two more years, but this
ended the experiment in nonpolitical administration of the department
and set the stage for thejgrrors of Home Rule.

THE PARTY MEN

*

WITH A FRESH mandate from the people and its Council majority upped
from five to four to nine to nothing, the Democratic machine was ready
to roll in high gear, and roll it did. The new mayor, Bryce B. Smith,
millionaire bakerman, sounded the keynote more business efficiency.
The first order of business was the unanimous election of Henry F.
McElroy for another turn as city manager and Mayor Smith thereafter
sat back to let the Council's hired man run the show.

The Council contained several interesting personalities of political
weight, and the makeup of this body rather accurately reflected the
composition of the entire machine. Contrary to the notion fostered 'by
association of ideas, the political machine was not a thing of well-
synchronized gears but a combination of dissident elements, frequently
quarreling, often in danger of falling apart and seldom in a state of
complete harmony. Tom Pendergast got the blame, responsibility or
credit for everything that happened although many conflicting voices
and interests went into the shaping of the policy that finally prevailed.
The man at 1908 Main Street consistently figured in the role of compro-
miser between hostik forces in the Democratic organization. Without
his skill as a co-ordinator or governor, he could never have established
himself as a true machine boss. Only five of the members of the new

BOOM TIME 153

Council belonged to Pendergast's faction, the others being followers of
Welch and Shannon. The way they all fell into line at Council meet-
ings was a beautiful example of team play, and the boss of the dominant
faction had to use other talents besides whip-cracking to produce that
result.

Pendergast's skill in picking outstanding men in the community for
public office was almost as famed as his genius for inspiring devotion
among those he supported. His following included individuals who
previously had distinguished themselves in other factions or in inde-
pendent activities. Mayor Smith, for example, first appeared on the polit-
ical scene with the Rabbits and was identified by the Star as a neutral
between the factions for some time after he took the mayor's office.
Councilman Ruby D. Garrett was another who was labeled a neutral at
the outset of his tenure in 1930. He had tried to crash into the political
picture as something of an independent in 1920, when he announced
as a candidate for governor, and again in 1922, when he defied the bosses
to run the steamroller over his boom for mayor. Both campaigns were
notable for their brevity and after that Mr. Garrett settled down to the
routine of law and politics, making himself useful to the organization as
a campaign orator for other candidates, building up his fences in the
American Legion, the Chamber of Commerce and other circles. The
habit of regularity grew on him through the years when he was winning
Pendergast recognition and during his ten years in the Council he de-
veloped into one of the organization champions, closing his career with
a spectacular effort to hold the line against the reform which swept on
the City Hall in 1939 and 1940.

The consistency with which Judge McElroy got his way with the
Council eventually produced a general impression that this body was
made up entirely of rubber stamps. However, the Republicans were
rather slow in selling this idea to a majority of the voters. One of the
reasons for that delay was the fact that the party in power included a few
conspicuous figures who on occasion made a show of resisting the
dynamic Country Bookkeeper. In fact, their combined protest attained
a considerable volume and weight over the years, although it did not
stop McElroy and his minions. The dean of this unusual company of

i 54 TOM'S TOWN

Democratic critics was Councilman A. N. Gossett, described by the Star
as "the most substantial member of the Council."

Councilman Gossett, the popular Farmer Al, had a mind and a con-
science that were alternately useful and disturbing to the machine. He
was a great vote getter and an indispensable man whenever there was an
occasion requiring a speech or a resolution that needed classical adorn-
ment and homespun treatment. Mr. Gossett was a lawyer with a high-
pay practice and a farmer with rural property that entitled him to
classification as an agriculturalist. He detested the word and insisted on
being called a farmer. He was the farmer of the First Ward and the
farmer of the Kansas City Club, the town's most exclusive retreat for
self-made men of means, which, in deference to Farmer APs demo-
cratic simplicity, was always referred to as his humble boardinghouse.
Farmer Al impressed his rustic informality on his luxurious surround-
ings, snapped his galluses, rumpled his hair and wore an old hat. He ob-
jected to the formidable array of knives, forks and spoons which he
found at his table and dispensed with all the eating gadgets except two
or three Simple items. "It's my belief," he said, "that all a man needs is
one knife, one fork, one teaspoon, one book, one wife or sweetheart and
one million dollars."

Puffing on his corncob pipe, made from cobs on his own Jackson
County farm and filled with natural leaf from Kentucky, Farmer Al
discoursed on beaten biscuits, Greek literature, the solar system and the
correct way to age Missouri corn liquor. His special brand was aged
in the wind, in a keg lashed to a tall tree, the wind, rocking it for several
months and blowing in "a sweetness and substance that Nature alone
is able to impart."

When he was a boy of ten, Al Gossett had been given a telescope which
stimulated a lifelong interest in astronomy and his conversation was in-
terlarded with observations on the eccentricities of the planets, along
with Greek and Latin phrases, all combined with Jackson County
truisms and expressed in pungent Missouri language. He frequently was
seized by the poetic mood and restrained with difficulty. The Council
unsuccessfully tried to stop him from delivering an original "Ode to An
Aerolite" at one of its duller sessions which he sought to enliven. The
ode was inspired by a twelve-pound chunk from a meteorite which he

CROCO&1IJEYEA

THE LITTLE

S. J. Ray in The Kansas City Star

Sympathy, Just Sympathy

The politician's stellar performance as a front man drew -this tribute from the car-

toonist in 1940.

156 TOM'S TOWN

had seen fall on a farm sixty years earlier, and today it is preserved in the
minutes of a Council meeting.

O shooting Star! Of old,

A coruscating flame,

Now spent and cold.

An air-stone that blazed

A fiery path across the skies.

Darkly dull and glazed, marked by fire,

Shaped in no design

Close to my eyes, you lie,

Heavily within my hands.

Fragment from distant space,

Cast-off, expelled, from stranger sphere

How come? What violative burst

Of Nature sent you here?

Was it that some devil, cursed

With Time and Death,

Made you thus drear,

If I had been where you have been,

What would I be?

Or, were you by some angel thrown,

Battling with Michael, or against him,

In that fight,

And missing, came twisting, sizzling,

Down to this light?

Short was your freedom,

Brief was your glory,

Pleased to meet you, hunky dory.*

Besides serving as the country-cured philosopher, poet arid humorist
of the city administration, Farmer Al performed useful work as policy
maker and restrainer of the Country Bookkeeper* He strenuously re-
sisted McElroy when the City Manager went to the Legislature to lobby
for his own measure to set up Home Rule in Kansas City. Farmer Al
publicly declared that turning over control of the police to the home
people would give the administration dictatorial power that would be
abused. His objection was based further on the sound point that Re-
publican responsibility for the police actually was an asset for the Demo-

* Reprinted by kind permission of Mr. Roy K. Dietrich.

BOOM TIME 157

crats with the crime problem in its current stage of development. If his
advice had been heeded, the machine might have missed some of the
worst storms that struck it.

Councilman Gossett criticized the City Manager for his defense of the
slot-machine racket in Kansas City. After Home Rule was established,
and an ouster movement developed against McElroy over his charter vio-
lations in handling the police, Gossett joined with the Mayor in insisting
that the leader of this uprising be granted a hearing by the Council.

He spoke out against the administration on other occasions and once
or twice it appeared that he might kick over the traces. The conflict
within him continued to the final showdown on the machine question,
but then he was too old and too sick to take a hand in the excitement.
The opposition honored him by not including him among the members
of the City Council against whom recall petitions were circulated.

Mayor Bryce B. Smith teamed with Farmer Al in the liberal or uneasy
wing of the Goat faction. Mayor Smith was the popularity man of the
organization, the little man loved by the masses, the rich citizen with
democratic manners and- a heart of gold. He also lent South Side tone
to the Goats, being socially well placed and a high figure in Rotary. A
pint-sized man with a boyish sfnile, he wore big hats and puffed on big
cigars, thought he had the heart of a lion and was always about to assert
his rights against McElroy and the bad boys of the organization. Judge
McElroy called him Boss and let him pitch the first ball at the opening
of the baseball season.

Garrett, Gossett and Smith illustrated the range of the Goat faction in
the upper levels of the city's business, social and political life. Contrasts
were equally well marked among other representatives of the organiza-
tion in government. One of the more important and interesting mem-
bers of the Council was Charlie Clark, who upheld the honor of the
North Side, which was included in the district from which he was elected.
Clark belonged to the old order with Alderman Jim Pendergast and
carried its early tradition into the final period under Big Tom. He out-
shone all the other councilmen in devotion to the machine principle,
the heroic quality of his service being illustrated by the incident when
he was carried to a Council meeting on a stretcher, a pneumonia victim,
to cast the deciding vote on a measure of importance to City Manager

158 TOM'S TOWN

McElroy. Clark spread the Goat gospel among the rank and file in many
other ways. He was the expert politician whose accomplishments popu-
larized the theory that the organization could perform special favors
for largs interests and small individuals, and serve the general public at
the same time it inflated the power and glory of the Goat boss. He dis-
pensed favors, justice and charity during a long career as legislator,
county assessor, clerk of the criminal court, justice of the peace and coun-
cilman. The only full-time working member of the City Council, he set
up a desk in an anteroom of the city clerk's office and kept himself al-
ways on call. He knew his business, for he was a student of government
and humanity, and an authority on the statutes and ordinances govern-
ing the city.

Councilman Clark was exceedingly useful to the Goats in promoting
the legend of Pendergast good will and good works among the numerous
lower order of voters. He was manager and host of the Christmas dinners
that were given annually by the ruling family for the derelicts of the ,
North Side. These affairs, which were introduced by Alderman Jim
when the guests numbered less than a hundred or so, were continued
by Tom in the depression days when thousands were served in a large
building near Market Square on Main Street. Charlie Clark was at
home with the drifters and gandies who crowded in to sit at the rows of
tables. His tousled hair, rumpled clothes and weatherbeaten face would
have made it easy for a stranger to mistake him for one of the crowd.
He knew the names of most of the men in the dining hall. "Don't call
it a charity meal/' he told them. "We are guests here today of Tom
Pendergast."

Blind loyalty like Charlie Clark's was, of course, the outstanding char-
acteristic of the Pendergast following. This myopic condition was com-
bined in many cases with the deafness and dumbness which partisanship
and sycophancy customarily produce. In fact, that devastating complica-
tion was so widespread that many observers were slow to appreciate the
fact that the Democratic organization's representatives in government
included one of the town's most vigorous dissenters, who was not intimi-
dated by Judge McElroy and could not be restrained by the desire for
harmony at 1908 Main Street.

This disturber in the machine was James R. Page, who was elected

BOOM TIME 159

county attorney the same year that McElroy became city manager and
whose rebelliousness grew at about the same rate as the McElroy despot-
ism. Page was a product of rural Missouri. Possessing some of the tough
qualities of the hickory trees on his native Sullivan County acres, he
proved that he was as good a hand in rough-and-tumble as the former
Iowa farm boy who ruled the City Hall. Determined to win a reputation
as a law enforcer and an independent public servant, he established a
record as a hanging prosecutor and a man who wore nobody's collar
except during campaign time, when he consistently had the -support of
Tom Pendergast.

The criminal cases handled by Page's office included many of the most
sensational crimes in the city's history and constituted glaring proof that
the growing slum areas in the industrial community were the breeding
grounds of an outlaw generation, which found banditry and murder the
quickest way out of poverty and segregation. Page was not concerned
with the primary causes of crime but concentrated on its suppression.
Leniency of the courts in sentencing prisoners, granting continuances
and approving paroles was regarded by him as a major factor in the
breakdown of public order and he incensed judges by denouncing their
parole board as "a crime-forgiving society." He clashed with City Man-
ager McElroy over police protectioh of the gambling syndicates and
publicly branded the City Manager as a topi of racketeers. He collided
head on with one of the principal powers of the Democratic organization^
John Lazia, the Big Shot of the North Side. ^

Lazia was an Italian-American, a son of immigrants. As a youth he
had a brief career in banditry, which ended when he was sentenced to the
Missouri penitentiary for highway robbery* Paroled long before he had
served out his term, he returned to Kansas City, engaged in the bootleg
traffic for a while before he emerged as a figure of consequence in poli-
tics and business. His political organization was the North Side Demo-
cratic Club, and at the peak of his power he was credited with being able
to deliver as many as seventy-five hundred votes. His nominal busi-
ness was a soft-drink manufacturing establishment, selling a line of
beverages that were favored by the city administration and. concerns
that wanted to keep in the organization's good graces. Lazia was re-
puted to have other extensive interests and was recognized as the head

160 TOM'S TOWN

of the gang that played the dominant part in the liquor and gambling
rackets and in the night clubs.

Although Lazia was a personal friend and political ally of Pendergast,
Prosecutor Page attacked him boldly and with increasing vigor. In one
campaign he publicly repudiated Lazia's support and got Pendergast to
back him up on the issue. Page's campaign against the North Side leader
grew in intensity through six years when he served as prosecutor and
afterward when he was elected circuit judge with the Boss's assistance.
He was living proof that a man in the organization could talk up to
Pendergast or go against the machine's political interests and not be
destroyed for his show of independence.

Some opposition orators explained Jim Page as a sham reformer inside
the organization, whose function was to provide a distraction that would
discourage a more thorough reform from the outside. If that was a cor-
rect analysis, then Pendergast permitted Page to go too far with his ex-
citing performance. The Prosecutor's quarrels with Lazia and McElroy
at the end of the 1920*5 and opening the 1930'$ were the first rumblings
within the machine itself of the revolt that was coming.

GAMBLER'S REVIVAL

THE STORY of Solly Weissman's effort to win recognition as a gambler is
the longest and perhaps the saddest legend of Twelfth Street. The society
in the neighborhood of Twelfth Street and Baltimore Avenue, center of
the gambling community, tried for a long time to ignore Mr. Weissman
but that was difficult to do, for Solly weighed three hundred pounds and
was light on his feet. He was Slicey Solly, sometimes called Cutcher-
Head-Off, the Captain Kidd of Thirteenth Street and the Bully of
Twelfth Street. He was a bootlegger, an underworld fronter, a strong-
arm man for politicians. Police also listed him as a hi-j acker, a gem
robber, and an innovator of the gang ride, among other things, but these
distinctions he always dismissed with a shrug and a pained expression.
"Not me, chief," he said. "Not me. My racket's whisky and gambling.'*
Solly's faith and persistence were sufficiently' large to make him the
representative figure of the age which believed that America offered

BOOM TIME 161

endless opportunity to every man willing to put some dough on the
name of a nag or the turn of a card. Neither financial panic, social
ostracism nor legislative prohibition could suppress or discourage the
gamblers. For half a century the effort had been made to banish the
games by outlawing them but throughout that time the habit had grown,
producing serious social and economic disturbance along with evidence
that the repressive measures that were tried actually had stimulated the
growth of the gambling mania.

The growing economic importance of this industry manifested itself
in various curious ways in the rise of Solly Weissman until 1930. That
was the year when the Coolidge-Hoover Prosperity finally reached its
dismal end in the debris left by Wall Street's Black Thursday of 1929.
It also brought forth Slicey Solly's most ambitious, and his last, under-
taking, but it did not end the gambling boom. By ironic coincidence,
Prosperity and Mr. Weissman went out together at the same time that
the games in Kansas City were entering their big play. Almost another
decade passed before the real depression struck Twelfth Street.

In the beginning of this revival in the early 1920'$, Solly set up a stand
at Thirteenth and Baltimore as a base of operations and found many
things to do while looking for gambling opportunities. Police closed his
dive after three men were shot there, one fatally, but they found no one
to testify against Weissman or challenge his alibi. A product of the First
World War period, when all factors combined to bring the underworld
type of citizen to full flower, Solly's progf ess was traced in police records
listing hi arrests for everything from vagrancy to investigation for
murder. One of his earliest exploits was the rolling of a Kansas farmer
for a few hundred dollars by administering knockout drops. Before long
he had advanced beyond petty operations and drew wide attention in
gambling circles when he was reported to have held up a dice game,
taking nine thousand dollars. His elephantine proportions, his airy man-
ner, his daring, luck and political connections combined to make him
a very interesting figure in nighttime circles. His reputation as a fronter
had firm support in his own record, showing twenty-nine arrests and
one conviction. The one rap against him, involving a five-hundred-dollar-
fine, resulted from a sentimental lapse when hp went to the rescue of an
icebox thief. The pilferer had been captured by his intended victims and

ifa TOM'S TOWN

was being menaced by a street crowd when Solly happened along and
spirited him away by impersonating a plainclothes officer.

Solly's soft side was revealed on another occasion when he figured in
a daytime New Year's duel on a residential street with his erstwhile
friend, Joe Wagner, the bank bandit. A neighbor wbman in the apart-
ment where Wagner lived, observing the maneuvering from her front
porch, pleaded with Solly to abandon the field on humanitarian grounds
and he solemnly considered her advice, then retreated ponderously down
an alley. Police were less impressed by the woman's moral power than
the fact that Solly's tactical position was bad.

A little later the Captain Kidd of Thirteenth Street took the spotlight
in the battle attending the mob primary when Miles Bulger was elimi-
nated from the political arena. Solly's arrest in that riot upset his plan
to settle his personal feud with Bulger's strongarm department, Swede
Benson, but .the feud was revived later when the Terrible and Unterrified
Swede and the Terrible Solly led their playmates to wreck and shoot up
each other's establishments. Alas, police interrupted that exchange be-
fore Solly and Swede got a chance to shoot it out.

With his continued success, Slicey Solly began to polish off the rough
edges. He dressed in expensively tailored clothes, wore Harold Lloyd
horn-rimmed glasses that emphasized both the comical and ferocious
qualities of his fat face, and developed a jolly line of side talk that was
both amusing and vastly disquieting. He was a man about town, a fa-
miliar figure in the night spots. He prowled the streets in a sports car
that was recognized everywhere by its rubber-tired windshield.

Weissman operated a dive near Convention Hall on Thirteenth Street
so he could be close at hand for the wrestling shows and other sports
circuses that were held in the hall. The sports craze of the record-break-
ing twenties found perhaps its most vigorous expression in Slicey Solly.
The wrestling shows provided both a source of income for the gamblers
and a rare entertainment. The clowning of the mat heroes was so good
that a vast excitement seized the entire crowd in the hall although every-
one knew that the matches were fixed. Solly also had a large interest in
that other great popular attraction of the day the dance marathon
but his attendance at these grotesque exhibitions was prompted less by
his delight in art than his pecuniary concern in the outcome. He and his

BOOM TIME 163

boys stopped a marathon in Convention Hall in 1928 when a couple they
were backing to win was eliminated by the judges. The show didn't go
on until their favorites returned to the floor. A little later the promoters
of the marathon disappeared, along with the prize money, and it was
rumored that Solly had taken them for a ride.

The rumrunniiig, beer and liquor-making enterprises that flourished
during Prohibition provided many opportunities for an enterprising
operator like Weissman. He formed connections with gangsters in St
Paul, Chicago, St. Louis and New York. At one stage of his operations
he was host in Kansas City to George Remus, the Cincinnati boqze king,
who was credited with making twenty million dollars from whisky
piped from government warehouses. Remus came to Kansas City shortly
after he had been released from an insane asylum, where he was com-
mitted after escaping the penalty for murdering his wife on a Cincinnati
street. Twelfth Street buzzed with speculation over the import of his
visits with Weissman, but there was no known sequel to the meeting
of this fantastic individual and the equally fantastic Solly Weissman.

The Weissman ambition to win renown in gambling circles grew
apace and he was reported to have a hand in a large casino in St. Paul.
He began to figure in the Kansas City big-time sports when he par-
ticipated in the financial backing of the dog races that were conducted
near North Kansas City, a venture in which he was associated with John
Lazia, the North Side politician.

But Mr. Weissman was not yet satisfied with the progress he was mak-
ing. He was still regarded as socially undesirable in the exclusive inner
circle at Twelfth and Baltimore and he wasn't in the big money. He
brooded over this until one day late in the third decade of the twentieth
century, when he got the idea for his greatest promotion, in the gambling
racket. His plan was to tap a race wire from one of the national syndi-
cates which carried racing results to the horse book offices where bets
were plaqed. If he could establish a leak whereby he learned the race
results thirty seconds or so before they were posted, Weissman would
make some large money. In order to establish this private service, Solly
called on a quiet and mild-appearing individual named Charley Haugh-
ton, who handled the wire for a national syndicate serving horse books
on Twelfth Street. An old^er and much smaller man than Weissman,

164 TOM'S TOWN

Haughton bluntly rejected the gangster's suggestion and was unmoved
when the three-hundred-pound bully tried to intimidate him with threats
of a beating up and a gang ride.

Not long after this, Weissman hurriedly left town and it was rumored
that he wouldn't come back. The police under the direction of Chief
Miles were making Kansas City uncomfortable for him and so were the
Federal authorities, who were prosecuting Solly in a liquor conspiracy
case. Whether his departure had anything to do with his effort to muscle
in on the gambling operation was never established, but the affair be-
tween him and Haughton had an explosive sequel when Solly recovered
from his alarm and decided it was safe to return to Kansas City.

The conflict between the massive Thirteenth Street bully and the little
Twelfth Street gambler moved Twelfth Street society to its emotional
depths. To the sentimental horse players and dice rollers, it was the
David-and-Goliath classic of the century, Charley Haughton was the
popular hero for he was not only the little man pitted against a giant,
he was also the defender of the old order, the mystical fraternity of sports
who regarded gambling as an honorable and vitally essential occupation
and labored earnestly to restore the prestige it had enjoyed in Old Town
in the heyday of Bob Potee.

Haughton carried the nickname of Hard Luck Charley, a title that he
earned in his early days after a run of losses resulting from his refusal to
take a hand in crooked games and sports shows. His fortunes improved
after he became a figure in the Kansas City horse book business. Hard
Luck Charley was one of numerous engaging characters who acquired
affluence and added something to the new legend of noble sportsmanship
on the street of long hom;s and short odds. Other substantial citizens in
this society were Harry Brewer, the blind bookie of Twelfth Street, who
earned a fortune by never making a mathematical mistake or violating
the code of fair play; Gold Tooth Maxie, the ethical and indestructible
crap shooter; Johnnie Johnston, the friendly fat man who liked to stand
on a Twelfth Street corner, smiling at the crowds; Jake Feinberg, who
was always sweet to the suckers and respected his obligations; and, o
course, Tom Finnigan, the unofficial mayor of Twelfth Street, who im-
pressed on everyone that there was nothing higher than a sportsman's

BOOM TIME 165

honor and nothing more picturesque than a turf follower's conversation.

Tom Pendergast was both trie political and spiritual father of this ad-
venturous company. He proved the depth of his devotion to the gambler's
ideal by the size of his bets and the extent of his personal losses while
supervising developments that brought a vast expansion in chance-taking
opportunities* He stimulated interest in racing by establishing the habit
of attending race meets in the East and leading a delegation to the Ken-
tucky Derby each year, and by acquiring a stable of his own. His friends
praised his horses and his judgment but learned to beware of his enthusi-
asms. Only one of his horses was a first-rate animal but Tom regarded
all of them with enormous pride and affection, and formed the habit
of honoring local or regional celebrities by naming his steeds after them.
He named one of his favorites Bo McMillin in honor of the old football
star who was then coaching at Kansas State College. Pendergast was so
eloquent on the subject of Bo's merits that he induced the Twelfth Street
boys to bet everything from the family piano to the washtub on him at
the Kentucky Derby. The Bo McMillin fiasco was painful and mortify-
ing to all concerned, but did not dampen the enthusiasm of the Goat boss
and his followers.

Pendergast brought horse racing tack to Kansas City, ending the ban-
ishment that had occurred two decades earlier in the administration of
Holy Joe Folk. The prohibition was lifted, or tilted, by a liberal-minded
Supreme Court, which reinterpreted the law to declare that the cer-
tificate form of betting was legal. Under this construction, a man could
go to a window at a race track and contribute a certain amount of money
"to improve the breed of horses/* Sometimes the breed improved unex-
pectedly fast, in which case he could collect a refund and stay within the
law. A New Orleans group of sportsmen came to Missouri to test this
new system, operating a track at Smithville, twenty-three miles north
of Kansas City. A year later, in 1928, a Kansas City group organized the
Riverside Park Jockey Club and took over the grounds used by a dog
track, five miles north of Kansas City. The park was popularly known
as Pendergast's Track. The Boss's name did not appear among the organ-
izers but the names of his business associates and close friends were
prominent in the list. The plant grew into a large establishment with
many windows for contributions and refunds. It drew crowds which at

166 TOM'S TOWN

their peak numbered more than seventeen thousand for a single day,
operating until another reform struck the state in 1937.

Riverside was the showpiece of the gambling boom that excited the
avarice of Solly Weissman and led him to undertake the promotion that
highlighted the hi-jacking and muscling-in movement of this period.
The gambling operators found that they faced as much interference
from crooks trying to horn in as they did from reformers who demanded
their business be suppressed. This double trouble manifested itself when
Jake Feinberg gave Kansas City its first little Monte Carlo the same year
that Pendergast's Riverside Track opened. Jake convinced a group of
backers that the very best people would be glad to lose their money if
dignified surroundings were provided in a sylvan retreat off one of the
new highways running out from Kansas City. The result was the Green
Hills Club. It was closed after a short run owing to the agitation of the
Presbyterians in Platte County and the overhead costs for "protection."

The Green Hills project was followed by a more elaborate endeavor,
Cuban Gardens, a night club and gambling casino on private grounds
near the Riverside Race Track. Johnny Lazia was the chief figure in this
operation at the outset. Phil McCrory, long-time business associate of
Pendergast, advanced him twelve thousand dollars as a first payment in
assembling funds to build the Gardens. The Ministerial Alliance of
Liberty, county seat of Clay County, started a campaign against the enter-
prise and the sheriff asserted he was doing his best to suppress the casino.
After five raids, he confessed his discouragement. Each time he found no
evidence of gambling but was charmed by the sight of fashionably
gowned women and men in evening clothes, dancing to the strains of
"The Chant of the Ju'ngle" and other current hits played by a large band
garbed in Spanish costumes.

It was difficult for an officer or any other intruder to break in on the
Gardens without warning. Armed guards sat in a small building at the
motor car entrance, sizing up the customers and admitting only those
they recognized. Once inside the club, a stranger would not have known
he was in $ gambling establishment. Well-armed men in evening clothes
admitted the knowing ones to the anteroom where the play in roulette,
dice and black jack went on under the eyes of more armed attendants.

The many diversions for sportive citizens provided daily and nightly

BOOM TIME 167

evidence that gambling was big business and was organized on an effi-
cient basis, with the operators making the necessary arrangements to
protect their interests. It was an enterprise that required devices to ob-
tain official toleration or to discourage crusading representatives o the
law, along with more forceful measures against raids by crooked gam-
blers, bandits, rival promoters and extortionists. The obvious inferences
were drawn by a large number of citizens and there were disturbances
among ministerial groups and other guardians of civic order, but the
protest was scattered and ineffectual for some time. The troublemakers
in the underworld were not so well under control. Individualists like
Solly Weissman remained a constant threat, and this fact was rudely
forced on the public's attention by the events of October 28, 1930, when
Mr. Weissman lumbered off the train from Chicago.

Solly had returned to settle a couple of matters. First on the list was a
conspiracy indictment involving him and several others in the operation
of a beer and alcohol depot in Kansas City. Solly was in high good
humor when he went to the Federal court to attend the final proceedings
on this violation of the Prohibition law, for his position had improved
sensationally in the interval while he was waiting to be called to triaL
This change had been brought about chiefly by the disappearance of the
government's star witness, Elmer Hoard. One rumor was that Mr. Hoard
was under wraps in Chicago, enticed there by a Weissman offer of
profitable employment. Another was that he was well encased in con-
crete on the bed of the Missouri River.

When the case was dismissed for want of evidence, Weissman swag*
gered from the judicial chambers, bowing, smiling, waving to old ac-
quaintances and admirers, shaking hands with lawyers, bondsmen and
other characters who crowed up to congratulate him. Then he went to a
hotel to confer with a few of his confederates.

Within a few hours after his return from his exile up North, Slicey
Solly gave every indication of an intention to remain in town for a long
period. He picked up where he had left off and set out immediately to
see little Charley Haughton. He found his man in a second-floor office
above Rayen's Turf Betting Agency at 1211 Baltimore Avenue. Mr.
Haughton had served a turn as a peace officer and he was ready when
the Terrible Solly marched jauntily into the room. It was all over in a

168 TOM'S TOWN

minute. Arley Rayen ducked for safety as Solly made a lunge toward
Haughton, who shot once across Rayen's desk. The big hoodlum sank
to the floor with a bullet in this throat. He was found there alone a little
later by persons attracted by the shot.

Charley Haughton voluntarily surrendered and gave a statement to
the prosecutor before Solly died early in the night. The authorities ex-
onerated the gray-haired race wire manager and he was showered with
congratulations from all sides. In the bars, hotels and poolhalls, men
talked of little Charley Haughton, the giant killer. Twelfth Street cele-
brated the slaying of Solly Weissman as a victory of the Good Joe's and
Honest Andrew's over the criminals, but this actually was only a prelude
to the final underworld invasion. The incident was quickly forgotten
and the play went on as before while the public agitation over the gam-
bling revival was submerged in the excitement of another political cam-
paign which carried TAm Pendergast forward to new power.

OF THE PEOPLE

IN THE FALL of 1930, when the first political shocks of the depression
reverberated across the land, notice was served of the larger r.oles that
Tom Pendejgast and Jackson County Jeflfersonianism were going to
play in national affairs for the next decade. The phenomenal increase in
the voting power of the Kansas Ci^y organization and the election of
the Honorable Joseph B. Shannon to Congress were important fea-
tures of a campaign which produced a pronounced Republican decline
throughout the nation and established Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt
of New York as the leading contender for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 1932.

"Shannon in Congress will put Kansas City on the map/' declared
Henry L. Jost, former mayor of Kansas City and a member of Congress
for one term in the twenties.

Boss Pendergast sent out the word that everything was to be done to
elect his old rival as the representative from the Fifth Congressional bis-
trict of Missouri, which then embraced Jackson County. Cas Welch,
Shannon's errant protege", forgot recent differences and ordered his fac-

BOOM TIME 169

tion to "vote 'em and count 'em straight" for the Jeffersonian o the
Rabbits.

Not thejeast interesting phase of the campaign was this demonstration
of party harmony, signifying that Pendergast at last had been able to
control the factionalism that had dogged the boss organization for nearly
a half-century. The most important point in Mr. Shannon's elevation to
Congress was, of course, that he was going on the shelf, leaving Tom
Pendergast to run the home front pretty much as he pleased.

Although the Pendergast matter dominated the picture, the sending of
Joe Shannon to Washington was an event that deserved more attention
than it received at the time, for it was of greater moment than the fact
that it removed the Rabbit leader from the Kansas City scene and placed
him personally under political obligation to the Goat chieftain. As the
loyal Mr. Henry L. Jost reminded the voters, Shannon was the right man
to put Kansas City on the map, in the Congressional Record at least. For
a decade he worked diligently to show that Jackson County was the new
fountain-head of the old-time Jeffersonian movement. Through his
speeches and the measures he espoused as congressman, he gave illumi-
nating expression to a Democratic philosophy that assumed increasing
importance in the conflicts attending the New Deal uprising, and which
today still affects the national destiny through another Jackson County
man in the White House.

The Jeffersonian revival that Shannon staged was one of the most in-
structive and entertaining of the political shows offered in the off-year
elections that brought the first rumblings of the unorthodox New Deal.
The Rabbit boss was perhaps as well qualified for this work as any man
who ever went from Jackson County to Washington. He had been pre-
paring himself for the role of statesman in all the years that he was
mastering the intricacies of practical politics.

In the periods when his faction was out of power and the Goats or the
Republicans took over the task of serving the special interests and ma-
nipulating the spoils system, Joe Shannon retired to his Jeffersonian
library. Law books and books on, by and about his national h'ero were
scattered helter-skelter in his office in the old Scarritt Building. They
were stacked on tables and chairs, piled on the floor, stuffed on shelves.
He never had time to arrange them but he read most of them. He had

170 TOM'S TOWN

been educating himself since he quit school at the age of twelve, in the
year that the Widow Shannon moved to Kansas City with her large
family. Beginning with a secondhand copy of Blackstone, Joe read law
until he qualified himself to pass the bar examination.

This Rabbit student added a course in the liberal arts by combining
two of his favorite pursuits travel and reading. He carried a book on
every trip he took, and sometimes made trips simply to have privacy
for reading. He took a unique college course when he sent his son, Frank,
to* California and Missouri universities. When Frank finished with his
textbooks he sent them to his father. Shannon studied them and carried
on a voluminous correspondence with his son regarding those texts.
When Frank finished university, so had Joe.

Shannon didn't learn all of his Jeflfersonianism from books and poli-
ticians. He got a large measure of his education by mixing with the
crowds, keeping his ear to the ground, listening to the argument around
the cracker barrel and the hot stove. The interest with which he studied
the common people, and the ease with which he communicated with
them, was illustrated Sy the manner in which he conducted his first race
for office.

While other candidates centered their appeals on the Kansas City
masses and placed increasing dependence on the blaring radio to carry
their messages in the fall of 1930, Shannon mounted the stump in towns
and villages* addressing friendly and earnest groups that seldom num-
bered more than four hundred. He started his race early with a show in
the nineteenth century style. Somewhere he found an ancient tent, intact
with bunting, flags and hardwood benches, that had served in the po-
litical wars of the past. He set it up and organized a troupe to travel
from town to town.- Crowds turned out to see the circus, for memories of
the days it recalled were long and vivid. Except for the substitution of
electric lights for torches, the show was a scene out of the Forty-Years-
Ago column. And the speaker on the platform was a figure out of that
earlier day. Mr. Shannon was a handsome man, somewhat in the Great
Roman style of Jim Reed but with more of a Bryanesque air. His silvery
thatched head, wide-set eyes, bold nose and firm chin were the features
of the dignified statesman but his face was perpetually cast in the amiable
expression of the countryman and courthouse politician.

BOOM TIME 171

Joe's circus got under way with a brass band giving a concert until the
tent filled. Before the speaking began three loyal and talented Demo-
crats Harry Kessel, Dick Okane and Jerry McGee, song-and-dance men
from Twelfth Street entertained the audience with popular songs, gags
and wisecracks. Then the future congressman stepped on the platform
and for an hour or more held the crowd's fascinated attention with an
authoritative exposition of Jeffersonian philosophy, interlarded with
colorful references to local history and ending with a stirring call to rally
in the never-ending fight of the people for Human Rights against
Property.

Shannon's campaign tour in the rural townships brought into the pic-
ture a part of the county whose character and real importance were over-
shadowed by the big city on the Kaw which had taken over the wholp
direction of affairs. The names of the towns told the character of the
country and the people in thp fifth district Independence, Blue Springs,
Lake City, Grain Valley, Oak Grove, Buckner, Sibley, Courtney, Hick-
man Mills, New Santa Fe, Lee's Summit, Grandview, Lone Jack, and
others saying that the lay of this land was good and men had made great
history here.

Politics was not a practical matter of power and spoils or a theory of
government to these people. Politics was in their blood. It was the old
time faith. The speaker knew all the key words and organ phrases that
moved these people for he was one of them, a true Jackson County
Democrat who spoke the language of Benton, Blair, Vest, Champ Clark,
Show Me, I'm From Missouri, and You've Got to Quit Kicking My
Dog Around.

The Rabbit champion belonged to what might be described as the
left of Jackson County Democracy. The Goats inclined to the right, as
represented by Jim Reed. Harry Truman, a Goat, later developed into
the most conspicuous liberal Democrat from Jackson County, but he
was a shining exception. At the time he stood for Congress, Joe Shannon
represented the extreme of Jeffersonian radicalism in the Democratic or-
ganization.

An interesting expression of the Jackson County Democratic philoso-
phy, suggesting its remoteness from the Jeffersonian ideas of New York's
Franklin D. Roosevelt, was given in the campaign of 1930. Joe's main

172 TOM'S TOWN

planks for the nation at this grave moment called for elimination of
government competition with private business and observance of Jeffer-
son's birthday as a national holiday. He succeeded in getting Mississippi
and one less benighted Southern state to adopt the holiday idea and after
he arrived in Washington he got himself appointed chairman of a House
committee to investigate Federal intrusion in the commercial field.

Mr. Shannon's Jeffersonian fundamentalism was expressed by him
in the statement that the "function of our government is political and
not economic," a principle he advanced with such vigor that he inter-
ested the National Association of Manufacturers and other large busi-
ness representatives in his reform. His scheme to check bureaucratic
competition with private industry was a bill calling for the introduction
of a cost accounting system in governmental expenditures, setting up
cost standards which,' if adopted, probably would have made even
Harry Hopkins think that the New Deal experiment was a financially
impossible undertaking. His bill died in 1934, in the midst of the Roose-
veltiaa shotgun wedding of government, business and labor.

Jim Reed was to go further than Shannon in upholding the states*
rights theory that the Constitution prohibited the use of the Federal
authority for any economic and social relief of the people outside of
building highways and encouraging education. He not only looked on all
New Deal efforts to establish a system of economic justice as interference
with American liberties, he also believed that the Republicans had been
leading the country down the road toward socialism with such radical
experiments as Hoovers RJF.C for big business and his farm board.
Jim's indignation over the way Hoover had run things was heightened
by the fact that Reed's old Missouri enemy, former Governor Arthur M.
Hyde, assisted the Republican Socialistic coup as Hoover's Secretary of
Agriculture.

In 1930, Reed, two years out of the Senate and preparing to run
again for the Presidency, was selected to deliver the principal blast from
Jackson County against the Great Engineer in the White House who
kept on seeing Prosperity Just Around the Corner while he fumbled with
measures to arrest the downward spiral The Stormy Petrel's contribu-
tion to public enlightenment was a vivid recapitulation of all of Hoover's
mistakes aad a dramatic statement of the size of the calamity, "There

BOOM TIME 173

have been more bank failures in the last few months than have occurred
since the days of wildcat banking. Six million people walk the streets.
... All due to the Republicans." The wealthy ex-Senator from Missouri
aligned himself with the oppressed and assailed Senator Capper of
Kansas as the tool of big business. He warmed up as he turned to the
subject of Farmer Hyde and his futile efforts to conjure away the farm
surplus. "He has two remedies, sovereign, complete and pleasing," said
Reed. "His remedy for the surplus is that we must eat it up. Women
must quit reducing and men must enlarge the capacity of their bellies.
It's a wonderful solution and the other day I heard of a farmer who had
solved his problems under this system. He took a load of hogs to market
but the price was so low that it wouldn't pay him for the cost of trans-
portation and he refused to sell. As he was starting back home, the buyer
argued with him and told him, 'No use of you trying to sell these hogs
some place else, you won't get a better price.' *I am not going to sell these
hogs,' said the farmer. 1 am going to take them home and sit up nights
to eat 'em.'"

Hyde replied with a pleasant irony. "Yes, Reed went after me," he said.
"I would have been hurt if he hadn't. The thing that worried me, though,
was that he didn't say anything about the Radio Corporation he is suing,
and said nothing about the radio trust he represents. I was worried, too,
because he spoke kindly of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Jeff erson and
I can't understand that unless he figured that they had been dead too
long to be registered."

Joe Shannon also was eloquent on the subjects of Hoover, Hyde and
the farm surplus, playing on the same refrain as Reed except that he was
somewhat more specific than Reed with respect to a remedy for the farm
surplus problem. Asked by a heckler to explain what he would do to get
rid of the surplus, Joe replied: "I would abolish Arthur M. Hyde." That
was about as far as the leaders went in defining the real issues of the
campaign. '

On election day the people went to the polls in a mass. The experts
explained that they went in such numbers to register a protest against
the party in power, blaming it for the depression. Although the cam-
paigning hadn't made much sense it was clear that free enterprise for
monopoly had made a hash of things and the traditional party of big

i 74 TOM'S TOWN

business didn't have the least idea of how to deal with the breakdown.
However, it is doubtful if the Democrats convinced many people that
they knew what to do for recovery, either. In Jackson County, for in-
stance, few of the thousands who voted for the Democratic ticket picked
by the machine could have been under the illusion that they were bal-
loting for a new order. Tke facts seem to be that the people turned out,
as usual, for many reasons, among which was the desire for a change
based on the sound theory that they couldn't get anything worse than
what they had, and there was always a chance for a miracle.

It was a relatively quiet election in Jackson County. Kansas City was
on its good behavior. The excitement was confined to the county seat
town of Independence where there were rumors that two high-powered
Democrats were to be kidnaped and Harry S. Truman, presiding judge
of the County Court, was alarmed by a reported attempt to kidnap his
six-year-old daughter, Margaret. As it turned out, the only person kid-
naped was 'a Republican, Rex V. Hedrick, then chairman of the Jack-
son County Election Board, who was seized while driving to the Election
Board offices with evidence of Democratic vote padding. His abductors
gave him a beating, taped his eyes and helcT him" prisoner all day, releas-
ing him in Kansas City on the West Bluffs just after the polls closed.

Democrats swept up everything in Jackson County. Missouri and
national politicians paid special attention to the returns from this county,
for Pendergast delivered the largest Democratic vote and the krgest
majority in history up to that time. Leading the ticket were two county
men, both from Independence and both of them to have an important
bearing on the future of the Kansas City machine, one of them to bring
it great prestige and the other to have a very depressing effect. They were
Harry Truman, re-elected presiding judge of the County Court by 57,859
majority, and Judge Allen C. Southern, returned to the Circuit Court
bench by 58,061.

Joe Shannon was sent to Congress by a margin of more than forty-five
thousand votes. The discrepancy between him and the Independence
men was not accounted for by friction in the new order of the machine
but was directly attributable to the Republican opposition in the person
of Rep. E. C. Ellis, running for re-election. Mr. Ellis was a rock-ribbed
Hamiltonian who by contrast made a nineteenth centurv liberal of the

BOOM TIME 175

Shannon type seem very radical indeed, and he raised a great alarm over
the Jeflfersonian revival conducted by the Rabbit champion. He wasn't
able to prevail against the Pendergast trend, but he had the satisfaction
of leading his ticket in the county, which may have been a tribute to
the power of the Ellis oratory and personality but also may be taken
as an indication that the old-fashioned Jeffersonian of Kansas Gity was
too advanced to suit a certain element of his party even in 1930.

The Heart of America

UP AND COMING

KANSAS CITY'S "monument to the Depression/* so ^described by Editor
Bill White of Emporia in a laudatory editorial, wa| the Ten-Year Plan
that was adopted in 1931. That ambitious undertaking exemplified the
native zip which the Real Estate Board still endeavors to cultivate with
its Up and Coming slogan for Kansas City. It was also a notable demon-
stration of the Heart of America spirit, which was peculiarly identified
with the Pendergast Goats. The Goats had much to do with the Ten-
Year Plan and one Goat was responsible for naming Kansas City the
Heart of America.

This story, which has more charm than most yarns with a political
flavor, begins back in 1911, when the town was trying somewhat indiffer-
ently to publicize itself as the City on the Kaw. That was the year when
Edwin J. Shannahan came to town to identify himself politically with
the Pendergast faction and win local distinction as a patriot, Commercial
Club booster and fraternal leader. He was the local head of the Fraternal
Order of Eagles when that order held its national convention in Kansas
City in 1914. It was then that Ed was struck with his happiest inspiration.
Convinced that his new home had a special significance and destiny in
the national picture, he coined The Heart of America for the literature
ballyhooing the convention city of the Eagles. The Commercial Club
tiier^ adopted it as a permanent designation and Arthur Pryor, whose
band played here fpi the Eagles' convention, later composed a "Heart
of America March," dedicated to Ed Shannahan. Another bandman,
Sousa, chose that march as the official song for Camp Funstoa in the

176

THE HEART OF AMERICA 177

First World War and thousands of Middle Western boys marched away
to its lively strains.

The location of Kansas City near the geographical center of the United
States was not to Ed Shannahan the most important factor in determin-
ing the appropriateness of his symbolic label. "It is the spirit the name
suggests that is even more significant," he said. "The word 'America*
gives it a patriotic flavor and the word 'Heart' stands for all that is noble
in life affection, sympathy, enthusiasm, hospitality, generosity and
other warm attributes which Kansas City possesses."

Ed Shannahan himself expressed those qualities in many individual
ways despite his involvement in the political rivalries that placed such a
heavy strain on the Heart of America before Ed's death in 1944. Mr.
Shannahan held political office by grace of Pendergast, serving as city
director of personnel from 1926 to 1930, retiring from public life to devote
himself to charitable work at a time when the civic harmony and build-
ing movement wa$ having its last grand flourish.

The original Heart of America man took only a very mild hope in
the future of his movement in the political field. He and other patriots
concentrated on hardware conventions, livestock shows, fraternal so-
cieties, parades and such to spread their gospel. Ed's own particular
prescription for the activity that would bring out the true Kansas City
qualities was sociability combined with exercise. His instrument for this
work was the Heart of America Walking Club, which set the standard
for hiking for a decade or so. "Make your daily walk your most im-
portant secular duty," was Ed's advice to businessmen. "A walk will cure
you of worries, frets and office fatigue." Each spring he sounded the call
to the lanes and bypaths and hundreds of walkers responded. To pro-
vide special inspiration, Ed walked a race from the Coates House to
Swope Park, a jaunt of eight miles, with Kirb^McRill, the Unkissed
Farmer and Walking Marvel f rom 'Tonganoxie, Kansas. Kirby won
easily, of course, but Ed got more converts and drew international atten-
tion to his project. One letter of praise came from Marshal Foch of
France. President Coolidge interrupted his budget slashing long enough
to send congratulations on the promotion of this "most inexpensive"
mode of exercise.

The most enduring product of the Heart of America walking venture

178 TOM'S TOWN

was Kirby McRill, who dedicated himself to the causes of private enter-
prise, civic boosting and hiking. He commanded the affection and esteem
of all social classes in a community that admires posiiive individualism
but does not look kindly on forms of exhibitionism that are inspired 1
merely by a desire to achieve notoriety. Kirby was the genuine article in
native eccentricity. He entered the movement to put Kansas City on the
map with as much civic enthusiasm as his backers, and his performance
was only moderately tainted with the commercialism that was mani-
fested in the circus stunts of the period.

When other cities, like Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco, were
attempting to enhance their prestige with flagpole sitters and other
endurance freaks, Kirby quietly went about his business of providing:
public entertainment on a year-round basis, with or without special en-
couragement. "He drewattentioriVherever he went with his long red hair
and his fierce red mustache, his magnificent stride and the pushcart he
trundled before him. He came to Kansas City from Leavenworth County,
Kansas, looking for romance. Here he met Daisy Bell HickS, a coed at the
Timpe Barber College. Their courtship continued through three happy
years until Daisy Bell jilted Kirby. He sued her for two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for breach of promise and found solace walking
far and wide with his pushcart. He let his whiskers and beard grow into
a thick brick-hued bush, devised a distinctive costume consisting of a
baseball suit, golf socks and sneakers and wended his way through
crowds with the solemnity of a fugitive first baseman from the House of
David.

Kirby lost both his unkissed status and some of his walking prestige
in 1922 when vaudeville and civic boosters entered him in a contest with
George N. Brown, the World Walk King, over a three-mile course
through the downtown streets. Two mayors the mayor-elect and the
retiring city executive stood at the starting line to give the match official
dignity. The throngs cheered and Kirby crossed the finish line first but
was disqualified on a technicality. He cantered while the World Cham-
pion walked. The crowd booed the decision and Kirby was kissed twice^
once for publicity by a Twelfth, Street; showgirl and once for the hell of
it by a local lady patriot.

It was decided that Mr. McRill had been improperly matched in this

THE HEART OF AMERICA 179

competition for he was an endurance rather than a sprint walker. Con-
rad H. Mann, sparkplug of the Chamber of Commerce, and several pro-
gressive spirits in the Heart of America Walking Club promoted another
demonstration to show the nation what the Kansas City champion could
do, arranging a walk to Chicago, a distance of more than four hundred
and fifty miles. Kirby rolled into Chicago a day ahead of schedule, travel-
ing on track rights granted by the Santa Fe and averaging sixty-three
miles a day, but he was dissatisfied with this feat. He was welcomed in
Chicago by Con Mann and Ed Shannahan, who sent a telegram advising
Kansas City why Kirby didn't do better: "Shoes tight, blisters causing
him to lose half a day. Slippery track part way. Snow near Carrollton.
Stopped to buy a shirt at Galesburg. Interference at Chillicothe. An hour's
delay in railroad yards here waiting for orders."

Kirby hoped to set a transcontinental record for the Heart of America
and he announced that in 1926 he would swim the English Channel and
break all previous records, after which he would call on King George,
but these ambitious plans did not work out. Kirby returned to Kansas
City and his pushcart, 1 keeping himself in hiking form as an industrious
collector of paper and odd trash. Con Mann found less time for play.
Fashions in civic enterprise, private endeavor, exercise and other things
changed but Kirby remained true to the old ways and made no con-
cessions to time except that his pace grew slower and his red hair and
whiskers grayed while he looked more and more like a minor prophet
escaped from the Bible.

Conrad H. Mann's association with the Heart of America hiking and
the Kirby McRill diversions illustrated the range of his interests as a
citizen and a booster. Con was the Get It Done Man in Kansas City for
two decades. Towering of frame, dynamic, indefatigable, filled with
boundless personal ambition and civic spirit, he was the personification
of the American promoter who shines in private enterprise and public
life. A German from "up north'* with a mystery in his background, he
was long accepted among the native sons as one of the citizens who con-
spicuously exhibited the qualities that made America great. He came
<iown from Milwaukee and supposedly was a native of Iowa.

Mann's principal work was done in the period between 1928 and 1933,
when he directed the Chamber of Commerce along lines that brought it

i8o TOM'S TOWN

closer to the political organization headed by Pendergast, His monu-
ment was the Ten-Year Bond campaign which reached a successful
climax in the summer of 1931, midway between the political campaigns
of 1930 and 1932 that established Pendergast's position as the boss o
Kansas City and the political power in the state. Mann was listed as a
Republican but he was a practical nonpartisan who operated among
the big men of both parties.

In the twenty years preceding his rise to command of the Chamber of
Commerce, Mann impressed his personality on the town in ways that
brought profit to both himself and the community. He arrived in the city
to work as secretary of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which in 1907
moved its national offices to Kansas City. Con's promotional zeal made
him so valuable to the Eagles that he became the permanent international
secretary of that large enterprise in sociability and insurance. He ex-
panded in other lines, stepped up as general manager, secretary and
treasurer of a brewery combine 'and took a hand in downtown real estate
and financial operations. Joining the old Commercial Club, later the
Chamber of Commerce, he forged to the front and was soon made
chairman of the Convention Bureau.

From that time on Con Mann was in the center and usually at the
head of every activity designed to elevate and advertise his home town,
whether it was arrangements for a convention party that the undertakers
or chiropodists would never forget, a scheme to force opera or symphony
on the people, a plan to discourage crime, or a charity drive. In 1928 he
was elected president of the Chamber of Commerce, a post he held for six
years, breaking precedent for length of tenure and retiring with the
status of permanent honorary president.

By fortuitous circumstance, Mann's administration was well timed for
the city in general and the Pendergast organization in particular. His
was the expansive spirit that gave Kansas City a lift at a time when most
of the country was going into a prolonged economic recession. And his
was the function that enabled all interests to work with the political ma-
chine in the most ambitious building venture undertaken since the days
when the city's park-and-boulevard system was designed and built under
the direction of Kessler, Meyer and Nelson.

Mann was made general chairman of the Civic Improvement Com-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 181

mittee that was selected by the new mayor, Bryce B. Smith. His Commit-
tee started the ball rolling shortly after the city election that gave complete
control to the Democratic organization for four years. Out of it grew the
Committed of 1,000 which Mann headed and which planned the Tea-
Year Bond Program, conducted the successful campaign and attempted
to supervise the execution of the program.

Colonel Nelson had found it necessary at times to make a deal with
the machine politicians to get parks and boulevards. It was necessary to
do the same thing for the Ten-Year Plan. The deaji was nothing like a
direct pay-off or a back-room arrangement. The inducement to the ma-
chine was the knowledge that it would have direct control of the spend-
ing of the millions under the program. Elaborate precautions were taken
to insure that the money was spent properly but the building trade was
set up in a fashion that made it certain a large share of the business
would fall to interests in good standing with the organization, and profits
would be large even if there were no- boodling. And, o course, the po-
litical prestige that went with responsibility for the program was a large
item.

The Pendergast organization publicly indorsed the bond plan and the
Welch and Shannon factions followed suit. Republican leaders approved
the program and participated in its promotion, hoping earnestly that
this would turn out to be a Nonpartisan venture, as planned, rather than
a Democratic project, as happened. The Star, carrying on the Nelson
tradition, was in the forefront of the movement. The Committee of 1,000
took in all elements of the population and enlisted the best engineering,
business and political minds to work out the details. Projects were ap-
proved on the basis of need and a showing of popular preference, de-
termined at a series of public hearings before the various committees.
When the plans were finally assembled, the program was presented to
the public in a campaign'that was notable for its effort to inform rather
than excite the voters. It was, in all, a rare and stirring example of de-
mocracy in action.

The people went to the polls with the slogan, Make Kansas City the
Greatest Inland City, and voted for the bonds four to one, castipg more
than eighty-nine thousand ballots. It was the largest vote ever registered
at a special election. The town celebrated the event with a Jubilee of

i& TOM'S TOWN

Progress, taking five days to express its elation in every form of entertain-
ment from a rodeo to an airplane and autogyro show.

The plan called for expenditure over a ten-year period of thirty-two
million dollars for city projects and with it were combined seven million
nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars for county projects, making a
total of $39,950,000. With the Federal aid money that was later added,
it was estimated that about fifty million dollars actually was spent under
the program. Out of it came a thirty-two-story City Hall, a skyscraper
Courthouse in .Kansas City, a new police building, a Municipal Audi-
torium that covered a block, paved roads that completed one of the
most extensive county highway systems in the country, trafficways and
boulevards, hospital extensions, a new water works system, parks, play-
grounds, sewer extensions and flood protection, a public market and
Bother important installations. The program was providential for Kansas
City. The depression was late in manifesting itself in this inland center
and it never struck with full force, thanks in large measure to the em-
ployment provided by the public construction.

Conrad H. Mann was presented a silver watch at a ceremony honor-
ing him for his effective work. He and his Committee were counted on
to restrain the politicians in the spending of the Ten-Year-Bond funds,
The Country Bookkeeper had figured in a controversy over employ-
ment policy in public construction work several months before the
Ten-Year-Plan election. In the first winter of the depression the city
found itself facing an unemployment emergency. With his customary
resourcefulness, Judge McElroy proposed that the city raise a million
dollars by the sale of Water Department notes, the funds to be used to
put the jobless men immediately to work building water main exten-
sions. That admirable proposal was approved by Mr. Mann and the
Bond Cbihmittee, and the City Manager worked out a plan to create
a maximum number of jobs by dispensing with tractors and excavating
machinery wherever possible, substituting picks, shovels and wheel-
barrows. McElroy's pick-and-shovel army created wide interest when it
first appeared, and the City Manager was not slow to exploit the political
credit. The idea, he said, was exclusively his, and he insisted that his
plan suggested the CWA, predecessor of the WPA, to Harry Hopkins
and the New Dealers. The favorable impression lasted until the Re-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 183

publicans and the Star complained that the city administration had estab-
lished a system of giving the jobs only to loyal Democrats, ignoring a
gentleman's agreement with Mr. Mann to let the Chamber of Commerce
employment bureau place the applicants.

Mr. Mann intervened in the relief matter to restpre peace, after it was
reported that one thousand of the first fifteen hundred jobs were filled
through the Democratic precinct captains' employment system, but the
agitation over discrimination was revived after the Bond election, and
steadily grew louder. It reached its height in the Brush Creek sewer
project. South Side taxpayers were horrified at the size of the pick-and-
shovel army engaged in clearing the channel of this once picturesque
stream, along which Daniel Morgan Boone, son of the great Dan'l,
trapped beaver more than a century before it became a sanitary and
political problem for the Country Cliib district. The pain of the South
Siders grew more acute when they saw their creek being given a solid
concrete bed. The long country-wide howl over boon-doggling probably
started in Kansas City. It was provoked by the waste of manpower in
the Brush Creek project, and magnified by the combination of Pender-
gast's concrete monopoly with relief jobs. If it was a fact that the Judge
gave Harry Hopkins the idea for his emergency made-work program,
he got the CWA off to a very bad start.

It had been hoped ttiat the city administration could be prevailed on
to follow the example of the county government under the direction of
Harry Truman, presiding judge of the County Court. Truman's work
with the citizens' advisory group and the record of his administration
were potent factors in the campaign for the Ten-Year bonds. Under a
seven-million-dollar-bond program that was authorized in 1928, Truman
introduced planning, expert direction and bipartisan control in a man-
ner that was new to Jackson County politics. He engaged two consulting
engineers, Colonel E. M. Stayton and N. T. Veatch, Jr., one a Democrat
and the other a Republican, gave them a free hand in laying out a new
road system and saw to it that their recommendations were carried out
in building the highways and a new county hospital. Judge Truman fol-
lowed the same standards in the additional county building authorized
by the Ten-Year Program. Two hundred and forty-four miles of paved
roadways were built twenty more than originally estimated and the

184 TQM'S TOWN

type of pavement constructed bore little resemblance to the pie-crust
roads built in the past. When the projects were completed there was a
tidy balance in the fund, giving the County Court a chance to wind up its
frugal custodianship of the public purse with a characteristic Truman
flourish. The Judge used part of the surplus for an equestrian statue of
Andy Jackson in front of the new County Courthouse and there was
more than enough left over to finance a special bond celebration for the
people of Jackson County, a mammoth barbecue at Sni-a-Bar Farms.
That affair was historically interesting on two counts. It was the first
exhibition of the future President's exceptional talent for mixing serious
public business and pleasure, and it produced the damnedest traffic jam
ever seen in rural Jackson County.

The bond planners had made provision for a nine-man advisory com-
mittee to v^atch over the politicians in the City Hall and the Council
agreed to that supervision, adopting a resolution pledging adherence to
the spirit and letter of the bond program, agreeing to follow the com-
mittee's recommendations where they did not conflict with official duties
and obligations, etc., etc. Mr. Mann appointed a committee of five Demo-
crats and four Republicans. He left himself off the list but the City
Council and its Hired Man did not like the idea of not having Con Mann
watching over them, too. So the Council appointed him to the committee,
increasing the membership to ten, and he was elected chairman. "That
makes it completely bipartisan," Judge McElroy remarked with satis-
faction*

/'Early in the Ten-Year-Bond building program, in the winter of
,'1932-33, the public was startled to read a report from Walter Matscheck
of the Civic Research Institute, showing that the city was renting
machinery at excessive rates from favored concerns, letting contracts
without competitive bidding and otherwise ignoring proper regulations
foSTTEeTprogram. The matter became a political issue when a group of
Republican lawyers filed an equity suit to recove^ more than $400,000,
from city officials, alleging that that amount of the bond funds had
been misspent.

Con Mann's advisory committee held a meeting and ordered an audit
and City Manager McElroy interpreted the auditor's report as an ex-
^oneration of the administration. In fact, he insisted that the audit showed

THE HEART OF AMERICA 185

the city had rented the equipment at an actual saving rather than the
overcharge of more, than $200,000 discovered by Mr. Matscheck. The
research man analyzed the audit and declared that the figures confirmed
his finding, and even indicated that the excessive payments were greater
than he had originally reported. The McElroy view prevailed on the
advisory committee and the City Council and the incident closed with
a light reprimand to the administration, which was advised to improve
its bookkeeping system and supervise the letting o contracts more
closely, McElroy thereafter ran the bond program with little interference
from any source except the Federal government, which entered into
some of the supervision through the extension of Federal aid in public
building. Walter Matscheck left Kansas City in 1936 to take a post with
the Social Science Research Council in Washington. There were no more
audits of the Bond Program until after McElroy. retired in 1939, when
it was found that more thanfeleven million dollars of the funds had been

ij-r ,-'"" 1ri - i fi

spent in a manner that violated charter provisions covering the letting
of contracts.

Con Mann and the Committee of 1,000 were no match for the Country
Bookkeeper. Mann's real work for his town was done when he stage-
managed the Ten-Year-Plan campaign. Not long after this he had
troubles of his own with the Federal government which permanently
depressed his promoter spirit.

McEmoy's COFFEE GROUNDS

t

IN LOOKING for a date to mark the beginning of the Pendergast decline,

historians may find it in the year 1932, which was some time before the
deterioration was visible to the general public. Many politicians and
observers say that the downward trend set in with the establishment of
Home Rule, giving control of the Police Department to City Manager
McElroy and the organization, an event that occurred early in 1932.
However, it is possible to discern the turning point in another episode
that made a more lasting impression on the popular mind than the Home
Rule decision.

z86 TOM'S TOWN

As so often happens in a community that is hardened to trouble and
has a rugged sense o humor that disposes it to see the light side of prac-
tically anything, this break in the peace began as something of a comedy
and continued in that fashion, providing some entertainment along with
vast irritation. It also produced the first opposition since the beginning
of the boom that Judge McElroy was unable to overwhelm, and the por-
tentous significance of this uprising was only slightly obscured by the
outlandish nature of the whole affair, which began early in 1932.

Cause of the excitement was a spectacle known as a walkathon, a re-
finement of the dance marathon, which became both a political event and
a popular entertainment when City Manager McElroy decided to sup-
press it for reasons that had nothing to do with the walkathon's curious
psychological effect on the masses. People rode vast distances to sit on
their rumps and watch miserable couples who staggered around the floor
of El Torreon Ballroom, where the show was staged. Although there
was no political emotion in this sports exhibition outside that provided
by the Country Bookkeeper, it managed to be a thoroughly grotesque
performance bearing a certain resemblance to the obscene party rallies
promoted by Hitler's Nazis in Germany. The sweating, rude, shoving,
cheering crowd in El Torreon gave itself up joyously to pure animal
emotion. It could have been turned into a mob on short notice and, on
one or two occasions, it almost was.

The City Manager interfered with the show after it had operated
three weeks. He appeared one night accompanied by officials of the
Building Inspection and Fire departments and ordered the walkathon
stopped within five minutes. His cause of complaint was that the crowd
was seated on wooden benches, violating a fire protection regulation.
His action followed a dispute between the promoters and Johnny Lazia,
the North Side politician. The managers tried to mollify the City Man-
ager, offering to remove any fire hazards they had created, but the Judge
insisted that the walkathon close immediately and finally. Asked by a
newspaper reporter to state his grounds for closing the show if the fire
hazard was eliminated, Judge McElroy replied loftily: "Coffee grounds. 5 *

His statement was acclaimed as a masterpiece of cracker-barrel wit
and machine arrogance at the supreme moment of McElroy's power,
and figured in later political campaigns. Opposition orators asserted

THE HEART OF AMERICA ' 187

that "coffee grounds" suggested to Lazia the idea of setting up a mo-
nopoly in coffee sold to restaurants and hamburger bungalows.

Despite McElroy, the walkathon reopened when the promoters ob-
tained a restraining order against the city from the Federal Court, but
official harassment continued for two more weeks while North Side
hoodlums devised some other methods to discourage the artistic enter-
prise in El Torreon. Police were called to break up an attack made by a
group of rowdies. A Lazia lieutenant was arrested for setting off a stench
bomb in the ballroom. The city filed complaints compelling the police
to arrest the proprietors, and the police judge rebuked the city admin-
istration for imposing an impossible set of requirements. A tear gas
attack and another stink bomb distracted the walkers and their partisans,
but nothing could stop the walkathon, for a large part of the public had
found that it offered a rare form of escape. The excitement spread 6ver
the city and a group of Negroes announced they would have a walkathon
of their own and would go the white folks one better by having a sitting
marathon as a sideshow.

The Torreon circus was a sitting marathon for thousands, who came
early and stayed late. Some of the fans lived on the benches in order to
stay close to their adored champions. An intense rivalry developed be-
tween the partisans of young love and the defenders of marital felicity.
Almost all of the contestants were romantic figures. There were brother-
and-sister teams and sister teams in the race, along with several lone
wolves, but the crowd lost sight of them in cheering for the youthful
sweethearts planning to get married on the prize money, and the wedded
couples who were trying to collect, something for the grocery bill. Youth
was the popular choice and the outcome was predicted by one of the
promoters, who sagely observed: "I've never seen a married couple win
a walkathon."

One of the romances had national repercussions, for it started Red
Skelton on his way to fame as a wow of the radio and screen. Red entered
the scene when one of the walkathon masters of ceremony wandered
away. The managers hurriedly drafted Skelton to fill the place. Red was
then appearing in the Gayety Burlesque Theater, a Hoosier comic earn-
ing fifteen dollars a week in an act called "The Three Bananas." (He was
the Third Banana, the others being Bozo Nelson and Joe Yule, Mickey

188 TOM'S

Rooney's father.) At El Torreon, Red's attention was drawn to a pretty
Kansas City girl, Edna Stilwell, and his admiration for her grew as he
watched her outwalk several partners, perambulate through a high
fever and finish with the winning couple. She was disqualified from a
part in the one-thousand-dollar prize money because she had no partner.
She did not despair but married Red immediately after the contest ended
and set about changing his act and writing skits and gags for him. Thus
El Torreon in its lunatic-days made its major contribution to the happi-
ness of a nation which can't get enough of Red, Junior and "I dood it."

So tough is the human constitution and so wonderful the human
spirit that by the time the walkathon ended, 117 days after it began, the
crowds were behaving almost rationally, everyone was refreshed, senti-
ment overflowed in all hearts and the contestants had put on weight,
some gaining up to fifteen pounds. They were also intellectually im-
proved, the management said. "The walkathon gives them opportunities
to develop their minds," declared Leo Seltzer, one of the promoters.
"Many of them read good books while walking around out there."

The great event ended the night of May 30,1932, to the accompaniment
of the sweetest story ever told, the winning couple being married at a
public ceremony in El Torreon. They were dressed to represent George
and Martha Washington, and attended by couples garbed in Colonial
costumes in an elaborate setting designed to carry out the Washington
Bi-Centennial theme of the year. The Reverend Earl Blackman, an un-
attached parson who ran around with sportsmen and intellectuals,
spliced the winners and everyone went away uplifted.

One possible explanation of the medical phenomenon presented by the
good health of the walkathon .participants is that they ate more regularly
than they had since the depression set in. They also missed entirely sev-
eral hundred calamities .marking the world's plunge into fascism and
war- In addition to hearing nothing about the Japanese bombardment of
Shanghai, the failure of the League of Nations, the crisis in France, the
Mannerheim Fascist coup in Finland, the Japanese-American diplomatic
crisis in China and Hoover's fumbling with the American unemploy- 4
meat crisis, they were not aware that while they slept on their feet Home
Rule had come to Kansas City.

When they left El Torreon the night of May 30, they stepped back into

THE HEART OF AMERICA 189

a world that was a very' disorderly place measured by the walkatho*n
standard. For several days Kansas City had been in the midst of one of
its greatest disturbances, which grew out of Home Rule and Rabbi
Mayerberg's objection to that reform.

THE CHALLENGE

IN THE MONTH of May, 1932, City Manager McElroy was out of the city
enjoying a well-earned vacation, Tom Pendergast was preoccupied with
state and national political affairs, the next city election was two years
away and the Republicans hadn't even begun to think about what they
would do then. It would have been difficult to select a less likely time to
start a full-scale offensive against the city administration, which was the
moment that Samuel S. Mayerberg chose for his campaign to drive
McElroy from the City Hall. The attack failed of its main purpose, but
it was the beginning of the revolt which overwhelmed the boss organiza-
tion seven long years later. And it was no small beginning, despite the
irregularity or inappropriateness of the Mayerberg approach.

Mr. Mayerberg was the rabbi of Temple B'Nai Jehudah, one of the
leading congregations of the town's substantial Jewish community, and
he had been a citizen of Kansas City less than four years when he issued
his surprising challenge to Pendergast, McElroy, Lazia & Co. Naturally
it took the public some time to get adjusted to the idea that this was a
serious political movement against the machine. With a few minor ex-
ceptions, the clergy in the past had rigorously observed the tradition that
government was a monopoly of the businessman and their political
stooges. Some elements of the body politic never got over the feeling
that Rabbi Mayerberg was embarking on a radical and dangerous course
in ignoring this old precedent. The Rabbi could not at one blow knock
out the deep-rooted convention that the preacher's place was in the pul-
pit, far above the mundane concerns of men, but he did succeed in
demolishing the popular notion that ministers have no talent for the
political life.

The Rabbi was a slender, intense figure who radiated friendliness, f ore-
bearance and positive convictions, combining a brisk modern manner

i 9 o TOM'S TOWN

with an Old Testament look. A Reform rabbi, he had 'served his church
eleven years in Detroit, Michigan, and Dayton, Ohio, before he came to
Kansas City, where he immediately served notice of his intention to take
a full part in the life of the community. His fight on McElroy was not
the result of an impetuous decision and the Rabbi was not the political
tyro that he appeared to be to many people who had not closely followed
his work. The contest against the machine was, in fact, the climax of a
three-year one-man crusade in which Mayerberg had learned his way
around in Kansas City and Missouri politics and found that the local dis-
turbance was but one aspect of a rather broad disorder in the Heart of
America region.

The Rabbi's first important exchange with the politicians occurred in
the sex-questionnaire episode which rocked the University of Missouri
and brought a change in administration at that conservative institution
of higher learning. Mayerberg teamed with Kansas City's liberal Protes-
tant churchmen, Burris Jenkins and L. M. Birkhead, in that fight. With
the assistance of Kansas City and St. Louis newspapers, and a few other
bold spirits, 'they made a spirited stand against the bigots who gave a
performance that was only slightly less comical than the famous Scopes
Monkey Trial at Dayton, Tennessee, and one that was almost as sad.

The M. U. issue, which started in 1929 and ran on for many months,
grew out of a harmless research project in Sociology. A graduate student
instructor in Psychology, one O. H. Mowrer, prepared a questionnaire
that was circulated among the students of Dr. Harmon O. DeGraflf,
assistant professor of Sociology, the students being asked to give honest
answers to several intimate questions covering their attitudes and ex-
periences in sex relations, if any. The idea that boys and girls of college
age should be required to consider such indelicate questions enraged
many of the rural editors, most of the preachers and a large proportion of
the politicians. E. M. Watson's Columbia Daily Tribune, published in
the Athens of Missouri, as the university town was called by its Chamber
of Commerce, did a thorough job of alarming the home guard with its
disclosure of the research project. North Todd Gentry, a Republican
saint and a former attorney general of the state, roused the Columbia
merchants to sign petitidxxs demanding the removal of Mowrer and Pro-
fessor DeGrafE along with the head of the Sociology Department, Dr.

THE HEART OF AMERICA 191

Max Meyer, one o the school's most eminent scholars. Dr. Meyer's re-
sponsibility for the sex inquiry consisted merely of failing to interfere
with it, but the Fundamentalists were not disposed to let him off on a
technicality for they knew him as a confirmed freethinker.

The politicians in the Missouri General Assembly leaped eagerly into
the ruckus, defending the old hayloft moral code against the whole kit
and caboodle of modern agitators and debunkers, and threatening to
reduce the legislative appropriation for the University unless the school
administration got back on the old-fashioned basis. While the legislators
ranted and the curators sweated; the M. U. students expressed their dis-
gust in various derisive ways. When the Board of Curators reported its
findings, firing Mowrer and DeGrafif and dismissing Meyer for one year,
the students were restrained with difficulty from going on a strike. The
American Association of University Professors entered the controversy,
censuring the board and criticizing the administration of the school
under a president who was more of a politician than an educator. Agita-
tion continued until the Curators finally admitted that the University
was under an oppressive regime and called for the resignation of the
president. However, the order against DeGraf? and Meyer was ajlowed
to stand and the incident ended with Rabbi Mayerberg still in a crusad-
ing mood.

The furor created by the M. U. business had hardly settled when he
was drawn into a couple of other episodes that broadened his knowledge
of Missouri social prejudices and political customs, and Strengthened his
fighting spirit. In January, 1931, Mr. Mayerberg was traveling in North-
west Missouri, returning to Kansas City from a speaking engagement,
when his train stopped at Maryville and a stranger in the seat next to
him remarked: "If you want to see a first-class lynching come back here a
week from today." Investigating further, the Rabbi learned that the
promised lynching was in the case of Raymond Gunn, a Negro, who
had been arrested for the rape-murder of a young white woman who
was the teacher in a rural school near Mary ville.

Mr. Mayerberg called the Missouri governor by long distance tele-
phone and succeeded in convincing that official that an emergency ex-
isted in peaceful Nodaway County. A unit of the National Guard was

192 TOM'S TOWN

sent to Maryville for the day when the Negro, who confessed the crime,
was to be arraigned. The guardsmen remained idly in the Maryville
Armory while the savage play ran its course. Raymond Gunn Was
chained to the roof of the little school where the tragedy began and
burned to death before fifteen thousand watchers. The exhibition of
official indifference in submitting to mob rule was followed by a round
of buck-passing which did .nothing to improve Rabbi Mayerberg's opin-
ion of politicians.

A more intimate experience with politicians and the American system
of justice came in this period jvhen the Rabbi attempted to save the life
of a Jewish youth. The victim was Joe Hershon, son of immigrants and a
product of the slums, who was involved in the murder of a policeman
late in 1929 and paid the supreme penalty some two years later on the
gallows in the Jackson County jail. Mr. Mayerberg realized he was in-
viting criticism when he intervened in this case and took that course in
the face of his own expressed conviction that a Jew, if found guilty of a
crime, "should be doubly punished, once as an individual guilty of an
anti-social act and once because he brought disgrace upon the Jewish
community/' There was no question of Joe Hershon's guilt but Rabbi
Mayerberg went to his assistance because justice in this instance was
unequal.

The bullets that killed the policeman were fired by one of Hershon's
accomplices, who committed suicide in jail after making 'a confession.
Charles M. Curtis, leader of the gang, got off with a life sentence after
Hershon Was condemned to death. The jury was reported deadlocked by
one juror's opposition to the death penalty, and the dispute composed
by agreement on a life sentence for Curtis. The inconsistency between
the two verdicts added to his opposition to capital punishment, led Mr.
Mayerberg to make a vigorous fight to have Hershon's sentence com-
muted to life imprisonment. His campaign ended in the governor's of-
fice, where the chief executive listened sympathetically to the Mayerberg
plea and explained the things that made it politically inexpedient for the
governor to intervene.

Mayerberg's effort to save the Jewish slum boy was overshadowed in
public interest by another of Jim Reed's- sensational performances in a
court of justice, which occurred in this period. Reed appeared as the de-

FIGHTING JIM

James A. Reed came on the scene with Pendergast backing, served eighteen years in the
Senate, made two bids for Democratic presidential nomination, broke with Wilson and
Roosevelt and finally turned against Pendergast.

JACKSON COUNTY

J.EFFERSONIAN

The Honorable Joseph B.
Shannon was a member of the
National House of Representa-
tives for six terms (1931-1943)
and head o the Democratic
faction which alternately
warred against and worked
with the Fender gast organiza-
tion in Jackson County. Mr.
Shannon reputedly was the
author of Fifty-Fifty, the trad-
ing agreement designed to
bring peace between the rival
factions, the Shannon Rabbits
and the Pendergast Goats. The
story is that the pact was ne-
gotiated in 1902 and one of the
first beneficiaries of it was
Tom Pendergast, who went on the ticket that year as county marshal. The Rabbits eventually
were subordinated to the Goats and Joe Shannon went to Congress to draw attention as an
apostle of the old-time Jeffersonian philosophy. He died in 1943 and the Rabbit faction now
is directed by his son, Frank P. Shannon.

JUST BEFORE THE FIREWORKS STARTED

This pleasant exchange occurred between the mayor of Kansas City, Bryce B. Smith (at the
left), and the chief critic of the city administration, Rabbi Samuel S.' Mayerberg, in May ior>
A few minutes later, Rabbi Mayerberg was speaking before the Council, demandm7that^
remove from office City Manager H. F. McElroy g

COUNTRY
BOOKKEEPER

The title that H. F. Mc-
Elroy liked was Judge,
which he acquired when
he was a member of the
Jackson County Court, but
he is remembered chiefly
for the Country Bookkeep-
ing system he introduced
in the City Hall when he
was city manager. This
photograph was made near
the end of his thirteen-year
regime, which ended in
*939-

BIG TOM

A rare picture of T. J. Pendergast in the days when he was beginning to throw his weight
around in politics. It dates back to the period when the future Democratic boss of Kansas
City made his first race for office in 1902, when he was 30 years old and was elected marshal
of Jackson County, Missouri.

THE BRIDE'S FATHER STOLE THE SCENE

Perhaps the most familiar picture of T. J. Pendergast, posing with his daughter's wedding
party. Unfeeling Republicans, more interested in partisan advantage than romance, made
thousands of prints of Boss Tom's figure in top hat and cutaway and circulated them over
the state in the campaign of 1930. In this section of the wedding picture, Mr. Pendergast is
shown with his wife and their daughter, Marceline, who was married to W. E. Burnett, Jr.,
in 1929.

THE HEART OF AMERICA

The Kansas City panel of die mural by Thomas Hart Benton which adorns the walls of the
House of Representatives' lounge in the Missouri Capitol at Jefferson City. Placing of Boss
Pendergast's figure in the foreground (seated on platform) was one of the details that
aroused critics of the mural, who stormed at both Benton and his Social History of
Missouri in 1936-1937.

WHERE: -KING TOM" HELD COURT

This modest building at 1908 Main Street was the seat of political power in Kansas City
during the thirteen years when the organization headed by Pendergast was on top. The
Boss met his public in an office on the second floor where his Jackson Democratic Club
occupied three rooms. The 1908 Main address still is headquarters for the town's dominant
Democratic faction, now headed by James M. Pendergast, nephew of T. J.

POLITICIAN'S DAUGHTER

City Manager McElroy's daughter, Mary McElroy, sought the limelight. Excited by the
drama of politics, she planned to write a book entitled "A Politician's Daughter." Her. own
life turned into melodrama and tragedy, and left her no time for writing.

GETTING THINGS DONE

Progress in the construction of Kansas City's new six-million dollar Municipal Auditorium
was being observed by T. J. Pendergast and City Manager H. F. McElroy when this photo-
graph was made in 1935. The Auditorium was a large item in the Ten- Year Bond improve-
ment program, an undertaking that had many political complications.

CRUSADING EDITOR

William Rockhill Nelson was publisher and editor of The Kansas City Star from 1880 to his
death in 1915. His imprint still is large on the town and on the Star, which now is ^employee-
owned. His domineering personality earned him the sobriquet of "Baron Bill"; his work in
building his paper from a four-page daily to a large-scale enterprise, and his battles for civic
improvements and political reforms made him a national figure.

CAPTAIN HARRY

Harry S. Truman was captain and commanding
officer of Battery D 2 lapth Field Artillery, Thirty-
fifth Division, in the First World War. This over-
seas picture is a prized item in the albums of the
Battery I) boys, a unit composed of Jackson
County men, who became Captain Harry's original
and warmest political supporters after the war.

THE SENATOR
FROM MISSOURI

Harry S. Truman was fifty years old in 1934 when he first ran for a seat in the United States
Senate. This picture from that period shows a dapper Truman who won handily in a
campaign which he described as "just a lot of fun." It was in that campaign that T. J.
Pendergast gave a show of vote-delivering power which caused political observers to hail
him as the undisputed Missouri boss.

ON WAY TO THE
WHITE HOUSE

The scene is a room
in the Jackson County
Courthouse, the time is
1933 and the men are
Harry S. Truman, pre-
siding judge of the
County Court, and Bat-
tle McCardle. Mr. Tru-
man established n rec-
ord in the Court that
started him up the polit-
ical ladder.

NECKTIES AND POLITICS

It was a dull day, commercially speaking, in the Truman and Jacobson haberdashery, at
Twelfth Street and Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, when this photograph was made, but
the political prospect was interesting. Harry Truman (in the foreground) opened this store
in partnership with his war buddy, Eddie Jacobson, soon after he returned from war service.
The store failed in 1921.

JUDGMENT DAY

One of the last pictures of Tom Pendergast is this photograph showing him at a table in the
United States Federal District Court in Kansas City, where he waited while his counsel and
the prosecutor discussed details of his case. In May, 1939, he was sentenced to fifteen months
in prison for income tax evasion.

CAMPAIGN TIME IN INDEPENDENCE

The Goat faction of the Jackson County Democracy staged a vigorous revival in the August
primary of 1946. President Truman contributed to the rally when he flew from the White
"House to his home in Independence, Mo., to vote. In this scene, on the lawn of the summer
White House, the President gives ear to remarks from his friend, Jim Pendergast. Near the
President is Mayor Roger T. Sermon of Independence, who is talking to Mrs. Truman.
At the extreme left is Nat T. Jackson, Independence businessman. This welcome to the
Chief Executive was an incident in a campaign which drew national attention through the
Pendergast group's successful effort to "purge" Congressman Roger C. Slaughter, at Truman's
request.

PLANNING THE COMEBACK

Once it was Alderman Jim, then it was Big Tom and now it is Jimmy Pcndcrgast in the order
of things for the Goat faction of Kansas City Democrats. The nephew of T. J. Pendergast,
who has directed affairs for the Jackson Democratic Club since the retirement of his uncle,
poses on a corner of a desk in his political headquarters. On the wall is a portrait of President
Truman and below it a framed check for $6 3 signed by Harry B- Truman, in payment of his
rp46 dues.

"REACH FOR ALL!"

The foregoing words are quoted from Judge Albert L. Reeves' charge to the Federal grand
jury in December, 1936, which started the long vote-fraud investigations that resulted in
more than 250 convictions, fudge Reeves also instructed the Federal grand jury which
indicted T. J. Pendergast ia 1939 for income tax evasion.

THE HEART OF AMERICA 193

f ense champion in an affair that made the headlines from coast to coast,
This was the celebrated so-called Bridge Murder trial of the era of bath-
tub gin and sophistication. The principal was an attractive young
matron, Mrs. Myrtle A. Bennett, who was charged with shooting and
killing her husband, John G. Bennett, in September, 1929, a few months
before Joe Hershon participated in the holdup and murder that ended
his brief career. The fatal bridge game was played in the Bennett apart-
ment in the fashionable Country Club district, at the end of a gay week-
end which the Bennetts spent with their friends, Charles and Mayme
Hofman. Bennett was set two tricks doubled in spades on a contract
which his wife hiked to four after he had opened with one spade and
Charles Hofman bid two diamonds. The inevitable husband-and-wife
quarrel followed. Bennett slapped his wife's face. She went to the bed-
room and returned with a revolver which exploded four times before her
husband died with two bullets in his body.

Former Senator Reed's appearance as chief of the Bennett defense at
the trial in 1931 stirred recollection of his dramatic conduct as special
prosecutor of Dr. Clark Hyde in the Swop^ murder case twenty-one years
earlier. (Judge Ralph S. Latshaw, who presided at the Clark Hyde trial,
was also the trial judge in the Bennett case.) Asserting that this was his
farewell as a criminal lawyer, Jim Reed demonstrated that age had not
rusted his histrionic and legal abilities. The jury sat fascinated through a
trial that was highlighted by a weeping act by Reed, by sharp exchanges
between the trial judge and Prosecutor James R. Page, and by the Prose-
cutor's angry comments in court over deviations in Charles Hofman's
testimony between the preliminary hearing and the trial, and Mayme
Hofman's lapses in memory on the stand. Reed gave a highly emotional
recital as he described how Mrs. Bennett got the revolver for her hus-
band to put in his traveling bag, as he was leaving on a business trip in
the morning, after the bridge game; the slap; how she stumbled and
accidentally fired the weapon twice; how her husband then mistook her
intention, struggled to seize the revolver and shot himself in the arm pit.
Climax was reached when the court ruled the prosecution could not in-
troduce its star witness, a. relative of the dead man, because the Prose-
cutor had waited to present this individual as a rebuttal witness when
he should have been offered in direct testimony. The jury brought in a

I94 TOM'S TOWN

verdict of not guilty and some anonymous versifier closed the episode
with these lines, which were printed in the Star:

One spade he bid,
Poor dud, he is dead,
She sits in widow_'s weeds;
He went down one,
She got her gun
One spade is all he needs.

The futile effort to arouse the interest of politicians and the public in
the fate of Joe Hershon went on until January, 1932, when Rabbi Mayer-
berg went to the county jail to spend the last night in the cell with the
condemned man. From midnight to five-thirty o'clock in the morning,
the Jewish teacher and the prisoner prayed together, played card games,
exchanged jokes with the jailer and ate the lordly meal that the state
provides just before it takes a life. The Rabbi walked to the gallows with
Hershon and the two men recited the Sh'ma together in Hebrew and
English just before the trap was sprung-

There is a memorial to Joe Hershon in the form of a little paper written
by Rabbi Mayerberg the day after the execution. It may be found in the
files of the Star, which published it, and it has been preserved in a book of
Mayerberg lectures that was issued in 1944 under the title, Chronicle of
an American Crusader. The document is of interest today to anyone who
appreciates forceful rhetoric, lucid thinking and humanitarian senti-
ments: It is illuminating to anyone who desires to understand why
America produces Joe Hershons and why its system of law is so ineffec-
tive in restraining evildoers. It should have made more of an impression
than it did some fifteen years ago, for it contained a call to a political battle
which soon followed*

"Before judging the enemy of society," the Rabbi wrote, "the state
must judge its own imperfections. But even in an imperfect social order
I believe that crime can be held in check, not by severity of the penalty,
but by the speed and certainty with which justice is rendered. Let society
rid itself of corrupt police departments, public officials and conniving
politicians; let men of courage and ability be elected to our benches; let
the legal procedure be rid of all the technicalities by which testimony
is hidden or perverted or delays are manufactured; in brief, establish a

THE HEART OF AMERICA 195

swiftly moving machinery of justice in America and the criminal will
surrender to society."*

Rabbi Mayerberg decided to take the reform initiative in the political
arena shortly after Home Rule came to Kansas City in mid-March, 1932,
in a surprise package from the Missouri Supreme Court, which threw
out the law under which the Kansas City Police Department operated.
The ruling climaxed the second mandamus action which the Police
Board had instituted to force the city government to accept its estimate
of funds required by the department. Reversing its previous ruling, the
court held, five to two, that the old statute covering the Kansas -City
police was unconstitutional because it delegated to the Police Board the
legislative power to tax, "in violation of the organic law." McElroy de-
clared he was equal to the emergency and had the Council rush through.
a measure authorizing the appointment of a police director. He named
as director E. C. Reppert, who opened his regime with the announce-
ment that he would concentrate on the suppression of major crimes and
the cultivation of polite manners among traffic cops.

The need for more efficiency in dealing with big-tim'e criminals was
clear to all citizens and was doubly emphasized at this time by a case
that created a sensation extending over more than six months. The crime
was a kidnaping that occurred a few months before the inception o
Home Rule and was followed by a dramatic manhunt and a prosecution
that were carried to a successful conclusion by Democratic l%w enforcers.
Victim of the abduction was Mrs. Nell Donnelly, wealthy dress manu-
facturer, who was seized in front of her South Side home at dusk on
December 16, 1931. She was in her Lincoln sedan, which was driven by
her Negro chauffeur, when the car was stopped in the driveway. Both
Mrs. Donnelly and the chauffeur were spirited away. Former Senator
Reed, a neighbor of the Donnellys, hurried to their home and took charge
of the rescue effort. Mrs. Donnelly was both financially and politically
important," and very important to Jim Reed he married her two years
later, following Mrs. Donnelly's divorce from her husband and the
death of Reed's first wife.

* From Chronicle of an American Crusader by Samuel S. Mayerberg, copyright 1944 by
Samuel S. Mayerberg, published by the Bloch Publishing Company. By permission of
the author.

xg6 TOM'S TOWN

Police ran in circles without a clue to the kidnapers. They were so
desperate for a lead that detectives and Senator Reed finally decided to
listen to a clairvoyant who offered her services. The crystal ball indicated
that Mrs. Donnelly was "down a slope" somewhere and the detectives
rode around town looking vainly for a likely slope.

Johnny Lazia, the North Side regulator, called out his scouts tb look
for the missing lady and her abductors. Evidently the shadow of the Goat
power fell across die kidnap hideaway with telling effect for the kid-
napers freed Mrs. Donnelly and her chauffeur after thirty-four hours
without collecting the seventy-five thousand dollars ransom they had de-
manded. The prisoners, who had been held in a place about an hour's
drive from the city, were released at four o'clock in the morning near an
all-night cafe on the Kansas side. The bandits left Mrs. Donnelly with a
towel over her head and the laundry mark on that towel served as an
important clue in the investigation that followed. One member of the
outlaw gang was pursued to Johannesburg, South Africa, and returned
to Kansas City. He was given a life term in prison along with one of his
accomplices. Jim Reed closed his career as a criminal lawyer with a flour-
ish by serving as special prosecutor in the trial of a third member of the
gang, who drew a long prison term.

This example of swift justice was too exceptional to allay widespread
concern over the Home Rule policy on crime control. Rabbi Mayerberg's
dismay over the new order grew until it forced him into explosive action
late in May, 1932. The immediate background of his blast included two
speeches by public officials. One came from McElroy, who declared be-
fore a meeting in a church that he regarded the last election results as a
mandate to carry on a partisan administration, which was his way of
warning ministers to stop their complaints about violations of non-
partisan provisions of the charter. The second incident was an address
by County Attorney Page, who called attention to the alarming crime
conditions and fixed the blame on the political system. Mayerberg's re-
action to those two, speeches, combined with the agitation over the ex-
femive changes which the Democratic administration was making in the
personnel of the Police Department, set off the crusade of 1932.

It began without advance warning or fanfare of any kind when the
Rabbi went before the Government Study Club, a woman's organize

THE HEART OF AMERICA 197

tion, for a noonday address in a downtown hoteL Much of its effect might
have been lost if a new reporter for the Star had not chanced to observe
Mr. Mayerberg going to the meeting. Ordinarily a session o the club
was not something ^newspaperman made a point of attending, but the
cub took a chance because he had heard the Rabbi speak on cultural
matters and was impressed by his erudition and eloquence. What he
heard this time was a flaming assault on the machine. Reporter Alvin S.
McCoy, later a political writer and war correspondent for the Star, got
the details right and his story made a smash in the afternoon edition.

'Tfou've turned your city over to a gang and given it into hands o
crooks and racketeers because you are asleep,** Mr. Mayerberg informed
the Government Study ladies. "The time has come for action. The time
for study has passed/'

One of the Rabbi's main points was that the City Manager had vio-
lated Section 124 of the city charter, which made it illegal to solicit a
member of a political party for campaign funds or to discharge city em-
ployees because of their political affiliations. Repeated violations of that
section had been made in the "lug" openly placed on city employees for
campaign funds and in the wholesale firing of Republicans from the
Police Department. Penalty for the violation was a fine of fifty dollars
to five hundred dollars and a sentence up to six months in jail. The idea
that any such action would be taken was, of course, ridiculous. That was
what Mayor Smith and members of the Council said. With their boss
away on vacation, the councilmen tried to suppress the Rabbi with ridi-
cule. Mr. Mayerberg developed heat and elaborated his charges as he

went along.

A few days later he met with the Ministerial Alliance, representing 104
Protestant churches, set the preachers cheering with his oratory and drew
them into the fight.

"If the churches of this city have not developed a laity that will rise up
and correct conditions, they have no right to exist," the Rabbi declared*
"I am not discounting the wide ramifications of political racketeering
and am -fully aware of the difficulties that will be found right in the con-
gregations of the various churches."

A day later the Rabbi's own board had a serious talk with him and the

198 TOM'S TOWN

president made it plain that Mr, Mayerberg was representing himself
privately and not B'Nai Jehudah. He didn't slow down, however.

As the revolt grew, the City Council, heeding the advice of Mayor
Smith and Councilman Gossett, decided that it would be a good idea to
go through the face-saving motion of granting the Rabbi a hearing. It
allowed him ten minutes; and responded with a resolution affirming its
complete faith in the City Manager and declared the Rabbi's charges
were not worthy of further attention.

Leaving the Council chamber, Mr. Mayerberg was stopped by John
Lazia, whom he had been calling a gangster, a racketeer and an ex-
convict. Mr. Lazia was then a poised, well-groomed man of thirty-five
and at first glance he suggested the conservative businessman more than
anything else. He deliberately affected an air of mildness that was height-
ened by his rimless eyeglasses, an amiable smile and his gum-chewing
habit.

The North Side leader seemed more amused than angry when he
accosted Mayerberg. His first remark was that he wanted to meet the
"second Moses" and he shook hands with the churchman. "You didn't
get very far, did you, Rabbi?" he added.

Rabbi Mayerberg hurried away and if he was disturbed by the en-
counter it was not evident from his subsequent activities. The battle
gathered momentum as Mayerberg turned in every direction to find
allies. He went to confer with the attorney general of Missouri in an
effort to have the state institute ouster proceedings against McElroy and
his police director. Increasingly bold charges were made against McElroy,
Pendergast and Lazia when he went before various clubs and churches
to speak. He spoke of "the noble gentleman at Nineteenth and Main
streets, the big shot who cracks the whip," and made a thinly veiled refer-
ence to a powerful banker who was allied with the Boss. Widening the
range o his attack, he even called for the ouster of County Attorney Page
after Page refused to consider instituting ouster proceedings against the
City Manager,

A bodyguard was formed for the Rabbi by Colonel Charles Edwards,
former police chief, together with one of the police officers who had been
let out in the Home Rule shake-up. The Mayerberg car was equipped
with bulletproof glass and was fired on once. His telephone rans- often

THE HEART OF AMERICA 199

with whispered threats of character assassination, physical mutilation and
death. He lived in a daily and nightly melodrama. For a time he was
aroused at three o'clock each morning by a call from a man who identified
himself as a gangster, called himself Pal, and offered the Rabbi informa-
tion and tips in his investigation.

Ministers organized a Charter League, with Mayerberg at its head, to
direct a recall movement. They started to raise funds and the Rabbi went
to the City Hall to examine records. He asked to see the last city audit
that had been made in the McElroy administration and was told that
none existed. He demanded to see the city payrolls, which he wanted for
evidence of payroll padding, and asked for the personnel records to check
on the new police officers being employed by the city. He was given the
run-around and openly defied by the city officials until he sought a writ
of mandamus from Judge Darius A. Brown, a Republican member of
the Circuit Court bench. After taking that action, Rabbi Mayerberg
called on the man he was fighting in the City Hall. When their interview
ended, he offered his hand to the City Manager.

"I don't care to shake your hand," said McElroy.

"My hand is clean while you have violated every provision of the
charter except that providing for the drawing of your salary," Mayerberg
retorted.

"That's all," Judge McEkoy barked. "We're through."

"But we're not through. We've just begun."

"All right," concluded the City Manager, waving his visitor to the door
of his office. "On your way."

The Charter League took the last line of the interview for its slogan,
"On Your Way, McElroy."

Rabbi Mayerberg charged that as many as seventy-five ex-convicts were
in the Police Department. When he finally was permitted to see the
books he could not verify his charges and declared that the records were
incomplete. The Charter League found itself shy of full documentary
proof needed to convict.

Agitation continued through the summer and the preachers created
most of the uproar from their pulpits. It began to subside late in June
when Mr. Mayerberg went to the West Coast to a Rotary convention and
followed that with a trip to Alaska on the advice of his physicians*

200 TOM'S TOWN

Rumors that he had abandoned the fight under the combined pressure
of his board and personal intimidation were widely circulated. The Rabbi
issued a public statement denying that he was leaving the city perma-
nently or was on an extended leave of absence. When he returned in July
he sought to revive the Charter League movement but it expired not long
thereafter. Many influential citizens applauded his efforts but no im-
portant leaders outside the church and women's club circles stepped
forward publicly to battle for him. The ministers were virtually isolated,
for all practical purposes, in the fight against the machine, and the
political organization was too strong, and the details of its operations
were too well buried, for a successful assault against it at this time. The
Star sympathetically reported the ministerial revolt, and its news cover-
age was a large factor in making the furor, but the newspaper did not do
any crusading on its own account and made editorial reservations on the
Mayerberg impeachment of McElroy's personal integrity and efficiency.

Fear of reprisals kept many sympathizers of the churchmen from join-
ing the parade, but another factor was a strong anticrusade sentiment
in the business community. Businessmen and the regular politicians
didn't relish the idea of working with ministers the parsons were too
difficult to control, too full of spirit, too unrealistic. The prudent prac-
tical men stood back and let the amateurs run the show. They took the
common-sense Chamber of Commerce view, which was aptly expressed
by its official representative at a meeting of the Round Table of Club
Presidents on the Mayerberg challenge.

<( It is all right for the churches to go on preaching the old-fashioned
gospel and building up a moral laity," said the Chamber man, "but when
it comes to ministers fighting politics, I just can't follow them."

WINNER'S LUCK

POLITICIANS, Tike professional gamblers, are among the least superstitious
of men. True, they carry rabbit's feet and other tribal charms, read signs,
study portents, make prophecies, feel the finger of destiny constantly
Upon them and appear to be congenially optimistic, but on the whok
they place small dependence on the hocus-pocus of their trade. Wl^ile

THE HEART OF AMERICA 201

others are planting potatoes in the dark of the moon, the politicians and
gamblers are diligently studying the form sheets, watching straws in
the wind, listening for rumbles of ground swells, observing the condi-
tion of the grass roots and otherwise basing their calculations on ob-
servable and predictable factors in any given situation. They are, in a
word, the scientists of our age and all of them have a system. The one
point where they share the common reverence for Lady Luck is in their
sublime confidence in their various systems, unfortunately an attitude
that contains a large element of superstition. They get in the habit of
thinking that their special knowledge of trends, percentages and aver-
ages makes them the favorites of fortune, and they often end by believing
that they know all the angles and have a sure thing. The sad result is
that the system players, the smart operators and wise citizens, are fre-
quently the victims of the deadliest of all maladies known to sportsmen
overconfidence and occasionally they become the greatest suckers in
the lot.

Tom Pendergast ha'd ample reason to believe that he was the darling
of fortune but he worked hard for most of the breaks that came his way
and for a long time kept his feet on the ground, soberly sizing up the
circumstances that combined to produce fortuitous events and not press-
ing f his luck too hard. In his horse racing and betting he early exhibited
a tendency to plunge, and this adventurousness became manifest in his
political activities when the growing size of the stakes and the nature of
the competition required him to move with increasing daring. Boldness
was one of his characteristics even in the days when he was feeling hi$
way. His gambler's instinct naturally became stronger as repeated success
increased his confidence in his system.

Events moved with a steadily quickening pace when Pendergast en-
tered on his largest operations in the 1930'$. In 1932, while McElroy,
Lazia and the Council were putting down the Mayerberg revolt in Kan-
sas City, the Boss made his largest gains in the Missouri arena. In f act,,
he made such a splash as the supreme Missouri boss and as a figure of
national consequence that sight was lost of several unfavorable portents
for the Goat overlord.

Chance conspired with the Democratic politicians to give Pendergast
unprecedented influence over the Missouri delegation in the national

202 TOM'S TOWN

House of Representatives in 1932. This was an unexpected by-product
of the 1930 census, which revealed a growth and a shift in the Missouri
population from farm to city and called for a redistricting of the state.
Pendergast had been a potent factor in producing a Democratic majority
in the state Legislature in 1930, and that majority approved a redistricting
bill which the Republican governor vetoed, denouncing the measure as a
plain gerrymander. The parties then fell into a protracted quarrel over
the problem and the deadlock continued until it was seen that the re-
districting could not be made in time for the congressional elections of
1932. The result was that the congressional candidates were voted on by
the state at large instead of by districts. Thus every Democratic candi-
date for Congress who hoped to be nominated had to have the big Jack-
son County majority and Pendergast's indorsement. They all called
hopefully at 1908 Main Street.

Fate or chance was very busy in that campaign of 1932. Death inter-
vened to place the selection of the governor directly in Pendergast's
hands. Leading candidate in the campaign was Francis M. Wilson of
Platte City, who won the Democratic nomination with Pendergast's in-
dorsement. Although he was a machine politician and a personal friend
of Pendergast, he had built up wide popular prestige as a representative
of the original Missouri Democracy, a true son of the Kingdom of the
Platte. Missourians were delighted with his high-flown oratory and his
poetical effusions on the natural beauties of their state. They liked the
way he looked and talked. They called him the Red Headed Peckerwood
of the Platte he had red hair and freckles and found he combined
democratic informality, dignity, humor, sentiment and statesmanly
qualities in about equal proportions. Facing the certain prospect of elec- '
tion to the governorship he died a few weeks before the final balloting.

Selection of Wilson's successor on the ticket was made by the Demo-

*

cratic State Committee, which Pendergast dominated, and the choice
was unanimous. The call went to Guy Brasfield Park of Platte City, a
Ettle-known country lawyer and Circuit judge. Park's chief points as a
politician were his party regularity and his devotion to the memory of
Francis Wilson. It was obvious that he would be a faithful organization
man during his term as governor and that his feeling about Wilson
would make him doubly grateful to the Kansas City boss for the honor

THE HEART OF AMERICA ' 203

he received. During his four years in Jefferson City the State Capitol
was popularly known as Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Signs that Pendergast was beginning to overreach himself and that his
phenomenal good luck was running out were given in this same cam-
paign, in which he backed an unsuccessful candidate for the United States
Senate. Tom's choice was Charles M. Howell, a Kansas City lawyer.

Candidate Howell was defeated for the nomination by Bennett Champ
Clark of Bowling Green, son of the famous Champ Clark, who had
represented Missouri in Congress as speaker of the House and was a
leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912*

The crosscurrents of machine politics manifested themselves in this
competition when the Kansas City organization's elder statesman, Jim.
Reed, a former law partner of Howell, gave his support to Clark. His
commitment to the Bowling Green man antedated the 1932 contest for
he was a friend of Bennett Clark's father. Reed had placed Champ Clark
in nomination at the Baltimore Convention where the Missourian was
the favorite until Bryan stampeded the delegates for the dark horse^
Woodrow Wilson. Bennett Clark later was to work alternately with and
against the Kansas City organization, but his principal effect on Pender-
gast was depressing. His successful race against Pendergast's senatorial
candidate classed as an upset, and the Howell-Clark episode served in
every way to illustrate the hazards and uncertain elements lying in the
path of the city Boss when he stepped beyond his home grounds and be-
gan to spread himself.

The cooling of relations between Pendergast and Reed, which eventu-
ally led to a break, started with the Bennett Clark raid. This was one
of the strange turns in the operation in which the Kansas City boss tried
to keep a Reed-for-President movement alive at the same time that he
attempted to send Howell to the Senate. He stood with Reed when his
political judgment must have told him that he wasn't doing himself any
good, and then found the Stormy Petrel opposing his Senate candidate
after the Reed-for-President boom flopped.

Reed's presidential hope was a long shot which the Pendergast family
backed heavily. If they won, they would be kingmakers and national
figures for all time. If they lost, it did not for long appear that they would
be out anything but the time and money that they could well afford.

204 TOM'S TOWN

Pendergast's promotion for Reed in '32 was the climax of an eight-
year presidential build-up. Or rather it was the anticlimax o 1928, when
the Missourian was believed to have some chance as a compromise choice
i anything happened to discourage Al Smith from making a second bid
for the nomination. The Kansas Citians put on a colorful show for their
hero at the Houston Convention, but when the shouting was over all
they had to show for their efforts was an unused campaign song.

Bound by ironclad instructions to stay with Reed until he released
them, the Missourians held out for Jim until they missed a chance to get
seats on the Al Smith bandwagon and Pendergast expressed the general
mood of the delegation when he threatened to knock the blocks off of a
couple of Smith men who tried to wrest the Missouri standard from
Big Tom's nephew, Jimmy Pendergast.

As the time for the national convention of 1932 approached, it was
seen that the Kansas City boss was following a lost cause with Reed and
missing the chance to put himself high in favor with the winner. The
backing of a favorite son candidate did not ordinarily jeopardize a party
leader's position with the successful candidate, but the opposition to
Franklin D. Roosevelt that came from Kansas City went deeper than
the usual pre-convention rivalry. Reed did not conceal his hostility toward
Woodrow Wilson's old assistant secretary of the Navy. The difference
had its origins in the conflicts of the Wilson period and in a basic philo-
sophical difference. Reed saw the New Deal trend in Roosevelt's admin-
istration as governor long before it was recognized by the general public,
and he talked darkly of Socialistic and Communistic heresies that were
spreading over the country. He was in the vanguard of the Stop Roose-
velt movement, and also served as the rearguard. Reed went to Texas to
confer with the Lone Star State's favorite son, John N. Garner, but Gar-
ner kept himself in a position to trade with either 'Roosevelt or the hated
McAdoo of California, and Reed faced the prospect of standing alone in
the convention with a divided Missouri delegation.

To keep Missouri in the Reed column, Tom Pendergast staged the
most spectacular state convention show in Missouri's political history.
An army of five thousand Jackson County Goats and Rabbits descerjded
oa St. Louis. Behind the scenes, Pendergast broke the hearts of a"
couple of, important individuals entertaining gubernatorial and sena-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 205

torial ambitions, shaped the party platform and dictated the selection o
delegates to the National Convention. He named the Big Eight the
delegates at large but for all his intimidating force, was not able to get
a full delegation pledged to Reed in a satisfactory manner. Outstate
Democrats and some St. Louis Democrats remembered how Reed had re-
fused to release the Missouri delegation at the Houston Convention in
time to make any hay with the Al Smith contingent, and they balked at
an ironclad instruction for Reed at Chicago in 1932. The best that the
Missouri boss could do was to obtain an agreement for the entire delega-
tion to vote for Reed in the early balloting. Even then there were
rumblings of protest, and it was evident that Pendergast could not keep
the delegation together long, after the Roosevelt stampede started.

There were signs of tension and jumpy nerves in the Pendergast party
during the preliminaries in Jim Reed's last stand. Pendergast's temper
flared at St. Louis in an argument with a delegate from Greene County,
a dispute that was said to have ended with one swing of the Kansas City
man's mighty right arm.

George Wallace, the Star's veteran Missouri political correspondent,
heard a report of the encounter and hurried to Pendergast's hotel room
to verify the account. Pendergast had retired to bed when Wallace
aroused him. Big Tom stood in the doorway and eyed the reporter in-
quiringly.

"So you slugged a guy," said Wallace.

"No, I didn't, George."

"They tell me there's a delegate from Greene County out cold and that
you slugged him."

"You've got it wrong, George."

'"Let's see your knuckles."

Pendergast held out his fists and there were no marks on the knuckles.

It seems that Big Tom was technically correct in his denial. He hadn't
slugged the Greene County guy with his fist but knocked him out with
the palm of his hand, and on blow settled the matter. As pieced to-
gether from gossip, the story was that the quarrel started in a hotel ele-
vator. The complete details were never 'obtained as there was no official
investigation. It is said that the police were called but beat a hasty re-
treat back to headquarters when they learned the identity of the winner.

206 - TOM'S TOWN

No one was disposed to bring charges or willing to be quoted, and the
story remained one of the little-known tales of King Tom's biggest con-
vention show.

BATTALION OF DEATH

A SPECIAL TRAIN- carrying some four hundred Kansas City Goats and
Rabbits arrived in Chicago the night of June 26, 1932. The travel-stained
Missourians were weary from a day-long effort to make a loud noise over
the more than four hundred and fifty miles from the Heart of America
to the Windy City, but they immediately started capering and shouting
to let the world know that the Jim Reed party was in town. They arrived
at a moment when the Reed cause looked hopeless, but were determined
to show at least that the Jackson County spirit was awesome and in-
domitable.

In the succeeding days the Jackson County politicians continued to
whoop it up while their great Roman grimly but vainly tried to hold
back the Roosevelt tide in the hotel rooms and on the Convention floor.

Pendergast beat down all arguments that Missouri, by refusing to reach
an understanding with Roosevelt, was missing a golden chance to cast the
deciding vote on a presidential nomination. Tom based his stand entirely
on personal loyalty.

"I am here for my friend, Senator Reed/* he said. "For forty years we
have been friends."

At one stage of the controversy in the Missouri delegation, Big Tom
took exception to some things that were said by L. J. Gauldoni of St.
Louis. He moved menacingly toward Gauldoni but the St. Louis man
was too nimble for the aging Kansas City boss, removing himself
from harm's way.

Sam Fordyce, who nominated Reed, perspired under the Chicago
Stadium lights acclaiming the man from the Heart of America as the
Apostle of Americanism. It was the familiar convention oration except
fdr some adroit references to Reed's record as an isolationist and his ul-
tra-conservative ideas of the correct way to handle the depression.

*lf you want the Democratic Party to be suspected o radicalism, com*

THE HEART OF AMERICA 207

munism, socialism, do not nominate bin," Sam needlessly advised the
delegates.

Missouri's thirty-six votes were cast for Reed on the first ballot, but
twelve of the thirty-six shifted to Roosevelt before the totals were an-
nounced. Reed picked up eleven Oklahoma votes from Alfalfa Bill Mur-
ray's delegation on the third ballot, reaching his top figure of thirty-
three. Tom Pendergast still stood fast with his friend and waited for the
signal that would release the entire Missouri delegation to the winner.

Reed sat in the Missouri section, surrounded by his faithful followers^
glumly watching a Roosevelt demonstration that roared and swirled
around him. A cigar was clenched in his teeth, his face was set in stub-
born lines and the old eagle look was in his eyes. Few persons noticed
the silvery haired, commanding figure in the Missouri group. This was-
the last convention in which he would appear, the end of his political
career, the beginning of the political exile in which he would spend his
last days. Ten years earlier he had fought back from a decree of exile
which Wodrow Wilson sought to impose on him. The shadow of Wil-
son was present in the Chicago Stadium when Reed was humbled and
defeated.

Breckenridge Long, the Missourian who carried the banner for
Woodrow Wilson against Jim Reed in the struggle over the League of
Nations, was in the Chicago Convention acting in behalf of Roosevelt.
The friends of Wilson, Long and Roosevelt sat in stony silence when
the nomination speech for Reed was given, and their emotions must have
been strong indeed when the speaker declared: "One great battle in
Senator Reed's career entitles him to an everlasting place in the Hall of
Famehis relentless, his successful fight to keep this country from ig-
noring Washington's warning to avoid all foreign entanglements."

The tableau in the Chicago Stadium recalled the dramatic scene at the
Democratic National Convention in San Francisco in 1920, when Reed
was read out of his own party for his fight on Wilson and the League
of Nations. Before going to San Francisco, he had been tried for dis-
loyalty and found guilty by the Democrats of Missouri at their state con-
vention, which voted 1070 to 490 to refuse him a seat in San Francisco as
a delegate from his home county. The Kansas City organization gave
him a set of credentials and sent along special pleaders like Francis M.

2 o8 TOM'S TOWN

Wilson to press his cause with the national party leaders. The National
Coihmittee denied him a seat on the temporary roll call of the conven-
tion and the Credentials Committee voted overwhelmingly to bar him.
An outcast, branded by the President of his party as a "marplot," Reed
faced political oblivion. It was widely expected that he would retire when
his term in the Senate expired in 1922, but such expectations were based
on a lack of knowledge of Reed and the Pendergasts.

Tom Pendergast's participation in the League struggle, like his stand
for Reed in 1932, was based on personal rather than political grounds.

"I don't know anything about the League of Nations," he had told
George Wallace of the Star in 1919. "But if Jim Reed says it is wrong,
it's wrong."

In the years between Reed's vindication battle in Missouri and the
Chicago Convention most men had forgotten the struggle that rocked
Missouri in the 1922 campaign and little was said of its bearing on the '32
conflict and the events that followed. It is a story that places the city
machine in the center of a world tragedy and illuminates the operations o
the reactionary forces that combined to kill the Wilson dream of brother-
hood and peace.

The Battalion df Death was the name given to the band of Senate ir-
reconcilables by one of its members who thrilled to the political melo-
drama. Reed of Missouri was its flashing sword and he reached the high
point of his oratorical effort in September, 1919, two months before the
first vote test in the Senate, when he spoke three hours before packed
galleries. His argument, and the whole argument of the Battalion of
Death, was summed up when he declared:

"Washington fought to establish the right of this .nation as a sovereign
to control its own affairs. Woodrow Wilson counsels with the representa-
tives of kings to transfer the sovereignty Washington gained to a league
they will dominate. The man who is willing to give any nation or as-
semblage of nations the right to mind the business of the American
people ought to disclaim American citizenship and emigrate to the
country he is willing to have mind America's business.

*l decline to help set up any government greater than that established
by the fathers*, baptised in the blood of patriots from the lane of Lexing- *
ton to the f orest of the Argoane* sanctified by the tears of all the mothers

THE HEART OF AMERICA 209

whose heroic sons went down to death to sustain its glory and independ-
ence the government of the United States."

Bedlam swept the Chamber. Women screamed, a group of doughboys
recruited for the occasion took off their steel helmets and clanked them
together and Vice-President Marshall gave up attempts to enforce the
Senate rule against applause. It was a well-staged show.

In this way the people were persuaded that the interests of their na-
tional state prohibited their meddling with novel measures intended to
secure world peace and equality, of opportunity.

Strategist Lodge produced a steady flow of ideas for ways to delay ac-
tion and talk the League to death. The issue of the Monroe Doctrine was
raised, together with the Irish Question, the Vatican Issue and the Yellow
Peril. One of Reed's contributions to the false alarm was the bogey of
dominance by the world's colored people. The resolution for ratification
of the League Covenant was killed with a basketful of reservations and
the great mischief was done a year and eight days after the first anni-
versary of the Armistice.

In the campaigns that followed, Wilson's friends set out to punish
the Democrats in the Senate who had opposed the League, and Reed
became their chief target.

Wilson had brought the fight to Missouri in the tragicaEy interrupted
speaking tour of the country which he undertook while the Battalion
of Death was holding the stage in Washington. He delivered one of his
most memorable utterances in St. Louis in the same September, 1919,
when Reed was making his gaudy America First speech in the Senate.
Wilson's St. Louis speech contained his prophecy of the Second World
War and was given in the city where the Missouri conflict over the
League issue was decided against Wilson. For Reed's own people the
ailing War President had reserved his direct warning, declaring:

If it [the Covenant of the League of Nations] should ever in any important
respect be impaired, I would feel like asking the Secretary of War to get the
boys who went across the water to fight, together on some field where I could
go and see them, and I would stand up before them and say:

"Boys, I told fou before you went across the seas that this was a war against
wars, and I did my best to fulfill the promise; but I am obliged to come to you
in mortification and shame and say I have not been able to fulfill the promise.
You arc betrayed. You fought for something that you did not get."

210 TOM'S TOWN

And the glory of the armies and navies of the United States is gone like a
dream in the night, and there ensues upon it, in the suitable darkness of the
night, the nightmare of dread which lay upon the nations before this war
came; and there will come some time, in the vengeful Providence of God,
another straggle in which, not a few hundred thousand fine men from Amer-
ica will have to die, but as many millions as are necessary to accomplish the
final freedom of the peoples of the world.

Although St. Louis was the center of anti-League sentiment in Mis-
souri, it produced the champion in the Show Me State fight on Reed.
Breckenridge Long, who had been an assistant secretary o State in the
Wilson administration, entered the senatorial race in 1922 on the* one
issue of Reed's disloyalty to the wartime President and the wrecking of
the League. Former President Wilson personally intervened in the
Missouri contest, asking that Reed be defeated. "I hope and confidently
expect to see him repudiated by the Democrats at the primaries," he
wrote in a letter to Lon V, Stephens, a former Missouri governor.

The prevailing notion is that the Middle Western farm and small town
are the strongholds of isolationist sentiment. That was not the story in
Missouri when Reed sought vindication for destroying the League. The
Democrats o rural Missouri caught the Wilson dream and held it. Wil-
son still is their hero. They rolled up majorities against Reed in 1922 and
they struck another blow for Wilson two years later when they killed the
Reed boom for President.

The city machines of Missouri's two metropolitan centers, Kansas
City and St. Louis, worked to save Reed, and the isolationist idea in-
spired them to employ the technique of collaboration on a scale never
before witnessed, for Republicans in large numbers crossed the party
line to vote with the urban Democrats, who supported Reed.

Senator Reed went into the race with the advantage of the popular
fame, the personal allegiances and the organizational ties he had built
up through more than twenty years of campaigning, facing a candidate
who was not nearly so well known to the voters and the party men. Reed
had a tremendous advantage in oratorical skill and he gave his greatest
performance on the stump in this campaign. Regardless of their convic-
tions, Missourians thrilled to a fighter who struck with daring and feroc-
ity, and the Stormy Petrel was spectacular in his defiance before hostile

THE HEART OF AMERICA 211

audiences in communities dominated by Rid Us of Reed Clubs. "The
man who is incapable of thinking for himself is too great a fool to send
to Congress," he thundered. "The man who would take the office of
congressman upon condition that he should vote according to the dictates
of some other man is too contemptible to send to Congress." Listening
to him, anyone who did not have a clear idea of the true issue involved
would have been persuaded that Reed was being persecuted simply for
his heroic refusal to serve as a "rubber stamp." Bridle Wise Jim suc-
ceeded in so convincing many voters. Observers declared that he was
one hundred thousand votes behind Breckenridge Long when the cam-
paign opened but on election eve all agreed that the outcome was a
tossup.

The Missouri senator's opposition to Prohibition and his stand against
the Klan also worked in his favor in the more populous centers, for these
issues were agitating the state at the time and the cities were more dis-
turbed over interference with their liberties by Kluxers and drys than
they were over the peace of the world.

Finally, Reed received substantial assistance from Nelson's old paper,
the Star, which performed yeoman service in the crusade to save the
country from "entangling alliances." The Star's role in the fight on the
League stands in notable contrast to its part in the isolationist struggle
before the Second World War, when it was one of the potent Republican
voices raised in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy. One
of the large factors in this change in position is the newspaper's present
editor, H. J. Haskell, twice winner of Pulitzer awards for editorial work.

Early in the League fight in the Senate, Reed called aside the Star's
Washington correspondent, Roy A. Roberts, now its managing editor,
and extended the Goat hand in fighting fellowship. Co-operation be-
tween the Republican newspaper and the Democratic Senator was
limited to the League question alone, and did not extend to the support
of Reed in the final contest with the Republican nominee, but their
teamwork before the nomination of 1922 marked the end o the long
feud between Reed and the Star.

Without the city machine and without the help he received from the
Republicans, Jim Reed could not have survived the attack by friends o
Wilson and the League. He won the nomination by a margin of five

2i2 TOM'S TOWN

thousand votes, and what saved him was a majority of nearly twenty-five
thousand from Jackson County. In the final election, Reed lost his home
county by almost one thousand votes but won in the state by more than
thirty thousand. The Republicans of St. Louis overcame the large out-
state majorities against Reed, turning a normal sixty thousand Repub-
lican majority into a forty-three thousand majority for the Democratic
"marplot."

Thus Wilson was cheated of a victory in his last political battle for the 1
League cause. Jim Reed went back to the Senate and the politicians took
up their normal business of building fences and strengthening the party
organization. By the time the situation was right for Reed's final bid
for the Presidency, Wilson was dead, Wilson's men were scattered and
the lightnings of the Second World War were flashing over Asia and
Europe*

It was certain that there would be no League issue at the Democratic
National Convention and there was none, but the world disorder could
not be stopped at the doors of the Chicago Stadium and the cause that
Wilson represented could not end with the failure of his imperfect
scheme for a concert of nations. The same conditions, ideas and hopes
that produced the Fourteen Points created a large collection of problems
for the politicians and the demand that their government undertake
drastic measures to correct social and economic wrongs beat insistently on
the delegates. The Stop Roosevelt men Reed of Missouri, Garner of
Texas, Alfalfa Bill Murray of Oklahoma, McAdoo of California and the
Tammany holdouts supporting Al Smith came to the meeting with
their routine schemes to save the Ship of State, preserve the status quo and
not rock the boat. But they couldn't get together and by some miraculous
chance the nomination went to the great humanitarian among them,
the one who believed that the people could create an order of security
and peace.

The climax was reached on the floor of the Chicago Convention the
aigM of July i. Jim Reed sat in the Missouri section, chewing his cigar
and glowering at Roosevelt delegates who left their seats to join in a
tumultuous parade for the candidate from New York. Near him was
Mrs. Nell Donnelly. She jealously guarded the Missouri standard for
tt*e man who was her hero and whose bride she became eighteen months

THE HEART OF AMERICA 213

after the Chicago Convention. At an earlier session of the convention she
had engaged in a spirited exchange with a St. Louis woman, Mrs. Nat
Brown, who wanted to put the Missouri standard in a Roosevelt demon-
stration.

"You go and sit down and think it over/* Mrs. Donnelly said to Mrs.
Brown.

"You go and sit down and think it over yourself,'* was the tart reply.

"Well," said Mrs. Donnelly with an air of great finality, "this standard
is not going to be moved. It would be accepted as a slight to Senator
Reed."

The standard was not moved then or for some time afterward.

The Donnelly vigil at the Missouri standard for Reed ended shortly
after McAdoo released the California delegation to Roosevelt on the
fourth ballot. Tom Pendergast retired to the Convention corridors to
confer with leaders of the delegation. The Roosevelt men in the Missouri
delegation were impatient as Garner was about to release the Texas dele-
gation to Roosevelt and this was the last chance to get on the band wagon.

When the Missourians returned to the floor the entire Missouri vote
was cast for Roosevelt, but Reed declined the honor of making the an-
nouncement. He later accepted an invitation to address the Convention,
and confined his remarks to his favorite topic the misdeeds of Herbert
Hoover.

This was the first conspicuous manifestation xDf the incompatibility
between the Roosevelt administration, and the Kansas City Democratic
organization, which became pronounced in later years, when Goats with
troubles found their influence in Washington was decidedly limited, and
eventually saw the national administration take a leading part in investi-
gations and prosecutions that wrecked the Pendergast machine. No one
has seriously contended that Washington's intervention was motivated
by personal or political differences between the national head of the
party and the local organization, but the record plainly raises the ques-
tion whether the anti-Roosevelt sentiment among important figures in
the Goat company predisposed the administration to take a large and
critical interest in Kansas City affairs at the very time when Pendergast
was embarking on some highly dubious undertakings.

The Boss came home from Chicago and delivered a record Jackson

2i 4 TOM'S TOWN

County majority for the ticket in the November, 1932, election, impress-
ing everyone tha't he had everything under control and apparently Mr.
Pendergast himself wasn't entirely prepared for the crisis that developed
swiftly after the campaign that buried the Reed presidential hope.

SUCKERS, PURE AND SIMPLE

IF TOM PENDERGAST had not been a gambling man it is possible that he
might never have developed into a successful political boss. On the other
hand, his political machihe might never have smashed up if he hadn't
been a gambling man. Gambling had been a matter of prime interest to
Pendergast from the beginning, but it may be doubted that he had ever
seriously considered that there were two sides to the question for him as
well as for the public, before 1932. Up to that moment he had found
pleasure in his association with gamblers, together with enough profit to
convince him that the odds in this enterprise were in his favor. Starting
then, there was a series of incidents that compelled him to consider the
other side of the question.

The Kansas City agitation over the gambling issue included an effort
to impress the tolerant Goat view on the new man in the White House
and a large part of the nation, and that ambitious undertaking began
December 5, 1932. It started with a demonstration in Kansas City's mas-
sive Union Station, Travelers had difficulty getting to their trains during
one hour of that winter night because of the crowd that filled the lobby.
Banners were raised over the heads of the throng. One sign read: "Wel-
come back to Kansas City." Another announced; "Kansas City Has Faith
in You." A third proclaimed: "Our Own Conrad H. Mann.'*

Con Mann was coming home from New York, where the day before
a Federal jury had convicted him of violating the Federal lottery laws.
He was sentenced to five months in jail and fined twelve thousand dol-
lars, the sentence growing out of a charity frolic, dance and lottery
conducted through the Fraternal Order of Eagles. It was a $1,759,373.60
party in which International Secretary Mann and the manager of the
lottery shared $460,000 of the proceeds*

Mr. Mana was visibly affected by the demonstration in his honor at

THE HEART OF AMERICA 215

the station. City Manager H. F. McElroy, who had been with him on the
gainful visit in New York, walked beside him. They were welcomed
by Ruby D. Garrett, city councilman and an official of the Chamber of
Commerce, who had worked hard to organize this spontaneous tribute.
"There are not more persons because the station lobby will not hold
them," Mr. Mann was informed by J. E. Woodmansee, vice president
of the Chamber, armed with a resolution from the Chamber stating its
unshaken faith in its president.

It might have been added that there also would have been a brass
band if the Ministerial Alliance hadn't adopted a resolution protesting
against the reception when plans for it were announced. The Chamber
men then decided to dispense with music as a concession to puritan
sentiment.

Kansas City was telling the world that it didn't consider gambling a
crime. It was telling Uncle in Washington where to get off. The show at
the station was the beginning of one of the greatest pressure campaigns
in American history to spring a violator of the law. It was also part of
the long and earnest educational campaign conducted by Pendergast
and his associates to acquaint backward citizens with the ways of the
world and the futility of attempting to suppress gambling, a crusade
that was just entering its final phase when the Chamber's president got
caught with a fat lottery rake-off.

Great progress had been made in the movement to make the world
safe for poker enthusiasts, horse book players and crap shooters, but the
Goat statement of the Kansas City attitude still lacked a certain finality
despite the commercial weight and official dignity of the demonstration
for Con Mann and other activities of the right faction. The Kansas City
boss encountered some of the most troublesome opposition to gambling
in his own party and one die-hard in particular was that old disturber
of the Goat peace Jim Page. In 1932, in the closing months of his six-
year tenure as county attorney, he conducted what was popularly known
as Jim Page's one-man war against the slot machines, or "one-arm ban-
dits," as they were more accurately and effectionately described. This
campaign was undertaken at a time when Page was running for elec-
tion as Circuit judge with Pendergast's support. Since the Prosecutor
succeeded in delivering a body blow to the Goat organization and at the

216 TOM'S TOWN

same time managed to retain the Goat boss's backing, his performance
was both impressive and bewildering to the onlookers. The fact that he
was able to go ahead without more effective interference from 1908
Main Street may have signified that Pendergast was open minde^hon the
gambling issue, but most observers liked the simpler explanation that
Old Hickory Page had Big Tom buffaloed.

Mr. Page was indeed an intimidating figure when aroused, but he
did not have Pendergast's man, Hank McElroy, bluffed. The City
Manager happily responded to the call to battle for his master, making
great sport in putting down the Page uprising. When the Prosecutor led
sheriff's deputies on a series of raids, McElroy's police confiscated slot
machines and smashed the evidence to the dismay of the Prosecutor.
Page promoted a grand jury investigation and asked the jury to return
fifty-seven true bills in slot-machine cases he had developed. McElroy
appeared before the jury and argued so well against this kind of law en-
forcement that the jury returned only two indictments, neither of them
involving slot machines. t

After he became a Circuit judge, Page attempted to revive the slot-
machine prosecution and succeeded in getting his successor in the county
attorney's office to press the charges in a justice of the peace court. His
Honor's humiliation was made complete when the J.P., a veteran Pender-
gast henchman, dismissed all of the cases for "lack of evidence" immedi-
ately after Judge Page himself had testified.

This exhibition provoked wide amusement in the town along with
protests from numerous ministers, club ladies, P.T.A. leaders and an
editorial writer on the Kansas City Star. Judge McElroy saw the need
for further public instruction and, with the enthusiasm of all crusaders
and zealots, overreached himself. The opportunity for this performance
presented itself when the Star carried an article on the growth of the
slot-machine industry in the town, emphasizing its effect on school chil-
dren, who happily squandered their milk and chocolate money to watch
the pretty cherries and lemons go around. This story was accompanied
by a statement from the City Manager, a statement of policy combined
with a lecture to suckers, parents and reformers which must rank as a
major contribution to the downfall of Pendergast for it goaded the op-
position to force a showdown on the gambling question.

THE HEART OF AMERICA 217

"Fm glad to see the slot machine come out in the open/* Judge McElroy
said. "As city manager, I am looking the situation squarely in the face.
I won't dodge. I am willing to accept responsibility.

"The man who plays a slot machine is a sucker, pure and simple. He
gets the thrill and the slot machine gets the money. There you are.'*

The remainder of the brief statement had the same bluntness and
candor of this stimulating opening. Coming quickly to the point, the
Judge announced :

"If there is an agitation in this city against slot machines, I will order
their removal from the larger stores that can afford to pay for morality.
But I will not remove them from small, independent stores. Why? Be-
cause they are keeping small, independent stores in business.

"Furthermore," added the City Hall's man of business, "I do not be-
lieve slot machines corrupt children. Their parents corrupt them. Any
child who must be reared by the police probably will turn out to be a
police character."

It seemed that everybody except the suckers resented having the truth
stated about this business. Reason, logic, ridicule, disgrace and impover-
ishment could not discourage the sportive citizens who were certain they
would hit the jackpot on the next pull of the slot-machine levers, and
they continued their moronic pastime while the responsible people de-
nounced McElroy for officially admitting that the government's morals
were no better than those of businessmen and parents.

The City Council found it expedient to do something to restore ap-
pearances and Councilman Gossett took the floor to proclaim that the
government's attachment to the ideal of civic virtue was what it was be-
fore the Council's Hired Man spoke out of turn. He sat down to a light
round of applause after giving McElroy a tap on the wrist, asserting that
the City Manager should at least have consulted the Council before is-
suing a statement of policy that amounted to nullification of a city ordi-
nance and a statute of the Grand Old State of Missouri. Councilman Gos-
sett explained that he did not make his reprimand more severe because
Judge McElroy was not present at the meeting to defend himself. Mayor
Smith arose, expressed his full agreement with the Gossett sentiments,
complimented Farmer Al on his restraint in view of the City Maix-

2x8 TOM'S TOWN

ager's absence. The Council then adjourned with a feeling that the moral
crisis had been met and mastered.

Then, suddenly, the Pendergast organization found itself in the midst
of a major emergency provoked by the gambling operation.

The explosion was set off by two good Democrats, Judge Page and
Judge Allen C. Southern, who inspired the grand jury investigations
that made the summer and fall of 1933 an exciting time in Kansas City.
Judge Southern made Jim Page's war on the gamblers a two-man affair
when he issued a ringing call for an inquiry that should go to the bot-
tom and the top of the racket industry.

The jury went immediately to work hunting slot machines, which
vanished with phantomlike speed and were stored in safe places for the
duration. Undiscouraged, the jury broadened the scope of its probe to in-
clude the monopoly in beer and beverage distribution, and the city
buzzed with excited speculation when Johnny Lazia, the North Side
kingpin, and Big Charley Carollo were called before the jury.

Excitement was heightened by a move in the United States District
Court to revive the Federal government's prosecution of Lazia for in-
come tax evasion. Tom Pendergast had exerted all of his influence to have
this prosecution dropped but heavy pressure for action developed after
new public attention was directed to the case by a member of the Federal
grand jury, who arose in open court to ask the judge what disposition
had been made of the matter. The judge turned the question to the
United States district attorney, and he explained that action in the case
had been deferred on "orders from Washington." This interesting ex-
change was followed by a message from the attorney general in Wash-
ington which reopened the Lazia case in the late summer of 1933.

Meanwhile, the courts of Circuit Judges Southern and Page provided
fresh sensations.

Pendergast himself started the Goat counteroflfensive with one of his
infrequent interviews. This was a command performance, staged in Chi-
cago, where the Democratic leader was visiting on political and private
business. A reporter from the Star was summoned for an important pro-
nouncement, and was ushered before the Boss with unusual solemnity,
Mr. Pendergast had put on an air of remoteness and gravity to suit his
new consequence and the nature of the occasion. With a very earnest

THE HEART OF AMERICA 219

manner, he announced that he had become a convert of the antislot ma-
chine cause. The slots must go, he asserted, and at the moment they
were being whisked out o sight by his loyal subjects.

Kansas City's First Citizen also wanted to let his people know that he
was thinking ahead for their moral welfare, and he took this opportunity
to state that he was against the return of the old-time saloon and in favor
of stringent liquor regulations upon the imminent repeal of the Eight-
eenth Amendment. In passing, he let his competitors know just what to
expect, asserting he would revive his wholesale liquor company when
Prohibition ended.

Mr. Pendergast then suggested gently that the agitation over gambling
and racketeering in Kansas City was exaggerated. He plainly felt that he
was a misunderstood man, and that his organization was being mis-
represented.

"I have been around quite a bit," the Boss remarked with engaging
modesty. "I know the ins and outs of life, know lots of people. Many
know me and I do not want to leave any impression that does not reflect
me as I am.

"There are all kinds of people in a political organization, just as there
are in the world. Among them are the best and others who take ad-
vantage.

"In recent months I have been in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago
and other places, resorts ,and otherwise. I say there is more gambling in
these cities in comparison than there is in Kansas City, except as may
have existed there thirty years or more ago down on the state line in the
Bottoms. It is the same throughout the country in every large center.

"So far as rackets are concerned, I can say advisedly that Kansas City
is freer from racketeering than any city its size in the country. Outside
of the gambling and slot-machine complaints, I say that Kansas City is
the standout city of the country so far as the protection of its city by the
police is concerned.'*

While the Boss in Chicago was complimenting Kansas City on the
safety of its people, terror struck behind the scenes. Grand jury witnesses
were threatened with reprisals in business and even with bodily injury.
Members of the grand jury received missives and telephone calls tfelling
them that they were jeopardizing their own lives and the safety of mem-

220 TOM'S TOWN

bers of their families. The jury was forced to meet in secret places in
order to escape surveillance and intimidating whispers.

The gangster tactic that made its appearance in the fight on Rabbi
Mayerberg had now developed into a permanent feature of machine rule,
and would be used in the future on an increasingly larger scale. It was
effective to a degree in the Southern jury investigation. It silenced some
people, forced many reputable citizens into perjuring themselves before
the jury and succeeded in concealing the evidence that was needed for the
prosecution of the important gamblers and slot-machine managers.

Southern's grand jury returned a final report that should have pro-
voked a wave of mass meetings, the ringing of fire bells and at least one
riot in a liberty-loving community. Nothing quite like that happened.
Fear, incomprehension, bewilderment and the habit of being ruled by po-
litical machines seemed to have paralyzed the democratic will.

There were still a few individuals who had not lost their powers of
indignation and initiative, and the most vigorous one of this select com-
pany at the moment was the fractious Goat, Judge Jim Page. While the
Southern jury was preparing its devastating answer to Pendergast's
pretty description o the Kansas City situation, Judge Page had been
busy calling the public's attention to the larger implications of the busi-
nessman's philosophy of tolerance for gambling, beer joints and easy
government. He seized an opportunity to slug the City Manager and his
system one September day when three young Italian bandits were
brought before him for sentencing. The Judge had prepared a rather
lengthy address for this occasion, for there was something about this
case that distinguished it from the long list of crimes involving products
of Little Italy on the North Side.

"The Court is of the opinion that these three boys do not belong to the
organized criminal gang of Italians in this city," Judge Page began. "If
they did, they would be represented here at this time by lawyers who
make their living off the proceeds of crime. If they didn't have the money
to pay for that kind of lawyer, the gang would furnish it for them.
The good Italian people of this city, and there are thousands of them,
are fortunate in having in their community a lawyer of the character of
Judge Benanti [the defense counsel].

"I do not believe," the Court continued, "that these boys ought to re-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 221

ceive the same punishment as the boys that are known members of the
criminal gang in Kansas City, and protected, in my judgment, by the
Police Department of this city.

"The purpose of punishment is not for retribution but for the purpose
of preventing others from committing crimes if it can be done. We have a
condition in this city, which these three boys, as bad as they are, are not
responsible for, entirely. We have at the head of our city government a
man who openly permitted violation of the law and made a public state-
ment to the newspapers he was going to continue to do it and what could
the people do about it? Now, so long as we have at the head of our gov-
ernment a man of this kind, and a man at the head of our Police De-
partment of the kind we have, how can we expect boys like these to have
the respect for the law that they ought to have? I do not believe that the
Court ought to impose the highest penalty on boys of this kind on ac-
count of the condition which has been brought about by some of the law
enforcement agencies of our city and our county."

Old Hickory had much more to say in the same vein on the govern-
ment's immorality, the North Side rule of terror and the public's apathy
before he let the young desperadoes off with twenty years each in prison.

McElroy's only reply to this blast was a typical McElroyism. "I refuse
to get into an endurance contest with a skunk," said the pride of Dunlap,
Iowa.

"All law-abiding citizens would rather smell the odor of a skunk than
that of his coffee grounds and rotten police administration," Page re-
torted.

The Judge was profoundly dismayed by the public's attitude in this
struggle. "The community generally gets the kind of law enforcement
that it wants and earns," he remarked to the Prosecutor. "The people
can't sit still and delegate this to the public agents. -The people themselves
are responsible. When they are going to wake up to the situation, I do not
know, but it is time they ought to begin to help us. If they don't begin
pretty soon it is going to be too late."

When the Southern jury returned its challenging report, Page ob-
served the slight agitation that it caused and struck again with a call for
another grand jury to complete the work of the first investigation. His

222 TOM'S TOWN

charge to that jury was his supreme effort to put some spunk in a de-
moralized people.

Instructing the jury to "go after crime" in all of its phases, the Judge
observed with broad emphasis: "He who violates the law is neither
Democrat nor Republican. He is a criminal."

Page's deepest scorn was reserved for the "substantial businessmen'*
who appeared before the Southern grand jury and gave false testimony
on slot-machine operations.

"I hope," the Judge said, "that you will be able to return indictments
for perjury against some of these so-called businessmen and goofl citi-
zens of this city. They are not good citizens. They are not businessmen.
They are racketeers just the same as the organization or other members
of the organization who are engaged in other rackets/*

Warning the jury that they could expect.no assistance from the Police
Department but that they could count on threats of violence against
them and their families, Judge Page closed with this challenge:

"If something should happen to one of us, we would only be making
the supreme sacrifice that thousands of American boys made a few
years ago in order that this might be a country fit for you to bring up
your families, and fit for your homes, and that you might sit around
your fireside without fear of anyone."

The jury took elaborate measures to cloak its operations and shield
witnesses, but the organization's espionage system was very effective and
the terror came out again. While the fear spread, the slot machines were
trundled off once more by the syndicate's spooks and many gambling
places closed. At the same time the principal game operators made a bold
demonstration of contempt for the investigation and thirty-eight of the
gambling spots ran full blast at the height of the probe.

Nothing untoward happened to the grand jurors for daring to do their
duty and as the investigation progressed the citizens called as witnesses
began to show more courage. The jury had been carefully selected and
it included men prominent in the business and professional life of the
city. Its work, together with that of the Southern grand jury, was the be-
ginning of the belated revolt against Pendergastism in the business
community.

Sixty-one indictments were returned by the jury, which adjourned

THE HEART OF AMERICA 223

after meeting for thirty days. Those indictments made hardly more than
a dent in the rackets but the jury's final report became a key text in the
furious city campaign that came a few months later. The approaching
political uprising was signalled in many ways in the grand jury work.
Foreman of the Page jury was an important Democrat, Russell F.
Greiner, who became a leader in the 1934 campaign against Pendergast.
Another member of the jury, D. S. Adams, figured in that battle as a
successful Council candidate. Alex S. Rankin, a Democratic stalwart with
prestige in both business and political life, joined the antimachine lead-
ership and ran for a seat in the Council. While the Page grand jury was
meeting the Republican Party showed new signs of life. Although the
next election was months distant, crowds turned out for a party rally
with campaign-time fervor, and were not chilled when their leaders
offered to join any group irrespective of party label to fight the machine.
The significance of this co-operative gesture was underscored by the
activities of a strange outfit known as N.Y.M., or the National Youth
Movement, which had just come into the open after a long underground
campaign. For months the Goats had been disturbed by the work of this
secret organization, which dropped the disguise with the announcement
that it would enter a ticket in the next city campaign.

While the forces of opposition were coalescing and beginning to de-
velop a leadership, Boss Tom was busy with both local and national
affairs. In his travels he discovered that the Kansas City struggle was at-
tracting wide attention and that the unfavorable reaction to the gambling
and racket development had spread from Kansas City to Washington.
He was jolted by this rude trend when he was in the national capital
on business, and incidentally to intervene personally on behalf of Con
Mann in the Eagles lottery case. Mr. Pendergast seemed to have been
unprepared for this humiliating experience, as he had every right to be,
for the campaign to get a presidential pardon for Mr. Mann was a
marvelous example of the machine process's efficiency on the higher
levels. Appeals in behalf of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce
leader were signed by the governors of eight states, senators from ten
states, eighty-one congressmen, four national labor leaders, seventeen
judges in five states, thirty lawyers in six states, and fifteen bankers in
four states. Boss Pendergast sent some of his ablest pleaders to confer

224 TOM'S TOWN

with the national party leaders and the Justice Department. They argued
that Mr. Mann was entitled to special consideration not only because of
his previous record and his standing in the Eagles and in society, to say
nothing of his relations with the Goat organization, but also because a
Federal jury had acquitted former Senator James J. (Puddler Jim)
Davis on similar charges growing out of a lottery in the Loyal Order of

Moose.

After these emissaries returned with unsatisfactory reports, and the
United States Supreme Court reftised to review the evidence in the
Mann conviction, Mr. Pendergast decided to show his formidable pres-
ence in Washington: Accompanied by Senator Bennett C. Clark of
Missouri, his sometime rival and ally from St. Louis, the Kansas City
boss sought an interview with President Roosevelt and received a quick
rebuff. The Chief Executive sent word through a secretary that he was
unable to see the Missouri overlord, adding that it was a Roosevelt rule
never to take up personally questions of presidential pardons. T. J. left
hurriedly for New York to confer with Jim Farley.

Five days before Mann was scheduled to surrender himself in New
York to begin his term in jail, the Page grand jury returned its sensa-
tional report, declaring that "gambling and racketeering permeate the
entire community and could not exist without paying for protection and
consequently going unpunished." The public was allowed to lose interest
temporarily in the approaching martyrdom of its business and civic leader
while it considered fresh evidence that it lived under a reign of terror,
created to perpetuate illicit enterprises which, the jury report said,
"will continue to flourish so long as they are cultivated by that potent
trio, the predatory businessman, the predatory politician and purchasable
gangster hired by the first two,"

The furor caused by the jury's report hadn't quite spent itself when
Con Mann departed by plane for New York. Machine leaders in the City
Hall and the Chamber of Commerce appeared to be more depressed over
the loss of their Get It Done man than they were by the grand jury's
indictments and denunciations.

Mr. Mann surrendered to the United States marshal in New York City
November 15. He wept when the judge signed his commitment papers
and waited in the Federal Building nearly four hours before going to

THE HEART OF AMERICA 225

the House o Correction. He had been checked in as a prisoner when he
received word that he was a free man again.

The pressure to make justice for the Eagle equal that for the Moose
moved President Roosevelt to grant a pardon on the jail sentence but
the. Chief Executive waited until Mann was actually in custody before
announcing this action, and left him under a fine, which was reduced
from twelve to ten thousand dollars. Leaving the House of Correction,
Mr. Mann joyfully made preparations to set out for home, sending word
ahead that he was returning by plane.

This pathetic vindication was good enough for the boys in the City
Hall and the Chamber, putting them in a mood of high elation. The City
Manager hailed Roosevelt's action as one of the great decisions of the
ages, and there was happy talk of a reception for Con that would make
the earlier one at the Union Station a colorless affair by comparison.
Plans for a rousing homecoming demonstration were abruptly aban-
doned when the home newspapers carried a brief item announcing that
Mrs. J. Howard Hunt, corresponding secretary of the Parent-Teacher
Council of Kansas City, had sent the Chamber a letter asking that there
be no public ceremony for the returning chief. The Council members
unanimously adopted the request, which explained that no personal feel-
ings were involved but "as a child welfare organization, we feel that all
good citizens should observe and respect the law. It is impossible for
parents to instil in their children right principles of citizenship when
prominent citizens who have disregarded the law are received with
public acclaim."

The weather caused Mr. Mann's plane to be grounded on the way
home. He returned several days later, without fanfare. The games were
reviving when he came home, and everything seemed to be going on as
before, but the words of the P.T.A. ladies echoed loud through the turbu-
lent months that followed.

THE NEW YOUTH

THE CAMPAIGN which brought the first full-scale political assault on the
Pendergast machine reached its climax in February and March of 1934.

226 . TOM'S TOWN

Although it failed of its immediate purpose, it plunged the community
into a state of continuous uproar for the next six years, during which
the principal aims o the challengers were realized. The turmoil has not
entirely settled even to this day.

Among the many interesting factors in this uprising, there were two
that shared the principal attention and produced the major damage to
the Democratic organization. One was the Kansas City Star's return to
all-out war on the Pendergasts, crusading in the old Nelson spirit. The
other was the N.Y.M., the National Youth Movement. The Star's par-
ticipation, which had the most depressing long-range effect on the Boss,
will be detailed at some length later in the story. This section is reserved
for the N.Y.M., which was the newest and most spectacular element of
the Pendergast opposition.

The battle began with young Joe Fennelly and a few contemporaries,
whose N.Y.M. was a national phenomenon that started and ended in
Kansas City. The "national movement" legend was designed to give
some false prestige and mystery to the maiden venture in politics of the
youthful South Side amateurs. Their movement got under way nearly
two years before the test at the voting booths in '34.

N.Y.M. started with a membership of five young persons, meeting in
a home in May of 1932, the month when Rabbi Mayerberg entered his
fight on the machine. The number grew to twenty-five and then to eighty
men and women, when the group elected officers and incorporated the
N.YJVL under the laws of Missouri. Progress at first was slow, for a good
reason. From the Mayerberg experience, Joe Fennelly's youthful rebels
had ample warning to proceed cautiously. They soon discovered that the
underground approach had other advantages. It appealed to the native
taste for melodrama and preyed on the Goats' superstitious fear of the
unknown.

Fennelly and his fellow conspirators spread the impression that they
had the multitudes by giving members metal disks beginning with the
number 2,301. They encouraged the notion that this was a national move-
ment by circulating the rumor that General John J. Pershing was the
head of it* Some Fu Manchu tactics were employed effectively in recruit-
ing members. One of the young master's lieutenants would softshoe up to
a young local banker, broker, advertising or real estate man, and fur-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 227

tively hand him ten cards to be filled out with applications of new
members. A week later another "stranger" tapped the young banker or
other prospect on the arm, saying: "I have called for th$ cards." The
young banker nervously handed them over, glancing around to be cer-
tain that no Goats were watching or listening. ^'They're all filled out,
too," said the y. b., his forehead glistening with honest sweat of fear
and desperation. Or maybe the sweat just indicated normal perspira-
tion, for this was a time of drought, heat and dust in Kansas City.

Finally, after more than a year, the N.Y.M. had four hundred mem-
bers and their exercise had so toned them up that they came boldly into
the open, talked of thousands of members and announced they would
enter a nonpartisan ticket in the spring election of 1934.

The perambulating and card-passing of the New Youth went on at a
furious rate in the next two months and the spectacular progress of the
revolt on the South Side was indicated in September, 1933, when more
than a thousand men and women crowded into the ballroom of the Hotel
Kansas Citian to hear the N.Y.M. officers explain their aims and plans.

With the mystery removed, the machine opened a vigorous propaganda
campaign of its own to discredit the N.Y.M. as a South Side silk-stocking
and collegiate boy scout endeavor. For years the Democratic politicians
had profitably exploited the difference between the North Side and South
Side but this was to be the most illuminating exhibition of the complica-
tion in municipal politics that was created by the old cleavage between
the haves and the have-nots.

The class character and ideological content of N.Y.M. were, in fact,
pronounced. It was primarily a movement of the conservative people o
property and it did represent a national agitation to some extent. It was
animated not only by indignation over Pendergast corruption and oppres-
sion, but also by fear of revolution growing out of the universal social,
economic and political crisis then known as the Depression.

Joe Fennelly expressed the basic concern of the N.YM. reformers,
showing that it transcended the issue of bossism in local government,
when he discussed the movement in an interview published in the Amer-
ican Magazine.*

* "Youth Goes Into Action," by Hubert Kelley, American Magazine, 1934.

228 TOM'S TOWN

"Communism isn't a way out,*' he said. "It's a way into more diffi-
culty. Why not begin changing things at home?"

The magazine writer who interviewed Fennelly was Hubert Kelley,
a former reporter on the Star, who hailed the activity in his old home
town as < a new youth movement, concerned with things and action,
not with words and dreams." He was impressed with its social and
financial rating. Joe Fennelly (University of Virginia) was then a paint
salesman headed for bigger things in business. ". . . He and his friends
lived in the better part of their city, played golf on fashionable courses,
attended country club dances with their young wives, motored into the
countryside in their sport models. All had jobs, even for depression
times. . . ."

It was the national crisis that started the junior executives thinking
about local government. The boys home from Princeton, Harvard and
other good colleges began with a discussion of the Hoover policies and
the Roosevelt revolution. Then the debate naturally grew to include
banks and banking men, liquor," women, marriage, love and finally
municipal government. The argufiers learned that none of them had
read the city charter, so they got a copy and made some interesting dis-
coveries. One of the chief points that engaged their attention was the
bonded indebtedness set-up, particularly the provisions covering the Ten-
Year bonds. They were amazed to learn how many millions of dollars
they were going to have to pay off during their lifetime, and their agita-
tion over the way this money was being spent naturally became intense.

This concentration on the dollars-and-cents costs of machine govern-
ment inevitably made N.Y.M. more appealing to businessmen and large
taxpayers than to any other class, so the movement was dominated by
the people who fear economic change and don't do much crusading with
organized labor.

Not all of the N.Y.M. people were collegians, however, and not all
of the college men had the conventional South Side viewpoint. At least
two or three of the latter were contrary individuals who didn't labor
under the illusion that they were opposing Pendergast and Karl Marx.
They knew very well that they were fighting American bossism and
fascism, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. This kind of understanding
was found in the N.Y.M. ward organization rather than in the higher

S.J.Ray in The Kansas City Star

North Side, South Side, All Around the Town

The movement that brought the cleanup victory in 1940 started with the N.YJM.
campaign of 1934.

230 TOM'S TOWN

branches of the South Side movement. The ward workers had a better
chance than most to get around and meet the people in all parts of townu
They found the people on the North Side living in a bondage to the
machine that was older and more subtle than the oppression which the
organization recently had extended to the people of the South Side. They
found that the machine was rooted in a society that operated on the
basis of social and economic inequality. The machine came into being
because it was effective in serving special interests above the common
good, and grew until the machine itself was about to become the largest
special interest the supreme monopoly of the system that produced it.
When and if the South Side people could be subdued, the revolution of
the machine would be complete.

Unfortunately, this simple lesson had not been learned by many
Kansas Citians in 1934, and N.Y.M. neglected to make its crusade as
interesting to the jobless man, the union man and the Negro as it was to
the good businessman. Quickly noting this defect in the opposition
movement, the boss pqliticians once more staged their grotesque farce
of fighting the battle for the masses and they were uncommonly adroit
in playing on all the old class antagonisms and confusions.

The significant fact was, of course, the N.Y.M. could not have pro-
moted a broad democratic revival even if it had had more of a will to
do so. The N.Y.M. was very young, and the political thinkers haven't
yet devised an effective program to unite the lower economic orders with
their superiors in enthusiastic citizenship. There is even a question
whether such an idea is practical under the American competitive system.
It wasn't practical at all in the Heart of America some twelve years ago.

In addition to this handicap, the N.Y.M. had to get along with the
Republicans. One of the most important consequences of the Fennelly
enterprise was this affair with the G.OJP., for the N.Y .M. either saved
or buried the Republican Party in Kansas City. The debate over the
correct interpretation of what happened goes on to this day.

The Republicans joined up after the movement had progressed to the
point where the South Side elders felt it was safe to take over the show.
A Citizens' Committee o 375 men and women was formed, the com-
mittee including both Republicans and antimachine Democrats. The

THE HEART OF AMERICA 231

organization officially named itself the Citizens Party and later became
the Citizens-Fusion ticket after the Republican County Committee
voted to join forces with the N.Y.M. and the dissident Democrats. Some
of the Republican politicians did not make this sacrifice for nonpartisan-
ship without a struggle. Under the prodding of the Star they finally
agreed to sink their historic political identity in the uncertain Citizens-
Fusion hope. They complained bitterly that five of the nine places on
the ticket went to the irregular Democrats and a deadlock developed
until cooler heads prevailed and it was seen that under this five and four
arrangement the Republicans had a chance to get four more seats than
they probably would get under any other system. Even so, many of the
G.O.P. elders were not happy, for this was a fateful step. It might mean
the official death of the Republican Party in municipal affairs, a tragic
event if you were a Republican and didn't accept the widely held opinioa
that the G.O.P. in Kansas City was in fact defunct before N.Y.M. ap-
peared to revive the fight on Pendergast.

There was a minority of die-hard Republicans who didn't believe the
Citizens-Fusion thing had 'enough future to justify the exchange or
who seemed to prefer Democratic oppression to fusionism. They entered
a separate Republican ticket to make the '34 primary a three-way race*

While the old heads took over the authority and direction of the cam-
paign, N.Y.M. remained in force as the spearhead of the attack, provid-
ing the enthusiasm, the shock troops, the fund raising, the publicity and
much of the oratory. Speakers were trained in an N.Y.M. school and
delivered an average of fifty speeches each week over a period of four
or five months. They carried the Citizens' message to churches, civic
and cultural groups and pepped up the businessmen with food and
oratory at luncheons in downtown hotels. When the final drive for votes
began, N.Y.M. had recruited and trained three thousand ward workers.

In short, the amateurs from the South Side gave an excellent account
of themselves. To N.Y.M. goes the credit for providing the spark, to-
gether with much of the sinew and intelligence, for the combination that
held out against boss rule. It brought into the arena a class that tradition-
ally had held aloof from the rough-and-tumble over public offices, and it
impressed a new sense of civic responsibility on a considerable number
o businessmen. It frightened a lot of others with the consequences of

232 TOM'S TOWN

machine rule. It proved that collegians can learn the political game rapid-
ly and make good fighters. Finally, it served as an effective instrument
for many citizens who were fighting for a better order in Kansas City
and for democratic rights, and not for narrow class, party or business in-
terests. In fact, N.Y.M. was developing along such broad lines in the
heat of battle that it is too bad that the antimachine politicians lost
interest in this movement after the new youth carried the Citizens-Fusion
Party through the terrors of February and March, 1934.

The ticket supported by N.Y.M. represented not so much the youth of
the movement as it did the older business interests. Head of the ticket
was a youth well up in his sixties, Dr. A. Ross Hill, former president
of the University of Missouri and a realtor who belonged to the foremost
circle of socially acceptable wealth in Kansas City.

A nice old gentleman like Dr. Hill had no business in a brawl with a
bunch of political pool-hall boys. He was, none the less, the logical candi-
date to raise the banner of the South Side and the businessmen against
the machine monopoly. He was a former president of the Real Estate
Board and a forceful spokesman for that element which long had been ac-
customed to the pursuit of profitable enterprise without much inter-
ference from politicians and expected to have their requests for tax relief
treated respectfully.

Dr. Hill was a recognized expert in real estate tax matters and in this
work had clashed with the Country Bookkeeper before he entered the
Citizens-Fusion campaign. He backed a bill in the Legislature to break
up one part of the city's tax system which was particularly attractive to
spoils politicians. This measure called for abolition of the office of de-
linquent tax attorney, an agency that collected about seventy-five thou-
sand dollars a year in fees. Dr. Hill argued that the office discouraged
payment of back taxes because of the high penalty on delinquency and
carried powers that were subject to abuse. The bill was on its way toward
passage when the City Manager intervened with a roar to obstruct it.

Naturally Dr. Hill was the object of the full McElroy wrath when he
entered the fray with the New Youth, and the Judge set out at once to
make the campaign his particular show. He gave perhaps his outstand-
ing exhibition of mudslinging, Dogpatch style. His first act was to label
the Fusion champion "squaw man," apparently a reference to the fact

THE HEART OF AMERICA 233

that Dr. Hill had married the wealthy widow o a prominent real
estate developer,

Dr. Hill denounced the City Manager as "arbitrary, petty and vin-
dictive." McElroy answered that he had had one affair with Dr. Hill and
"so far as that deal is concerned, I will plead guilty now to being arbi-
trary, and vindictive but not petty." He went on to explain that he had
thwarted Dr. Hill and his stepson in an effort to exact an exorbitant
price for a piece of land involved in condemnation proceedings for a
new highway entrance to the city. "Yes," said this righteous guardian
of the public treasury, "I was arbitrary, perhaps a little petty and ad-
mittedly vindictive with these high-toned, respectable gentlemen who
were trying to get their hands in the taxpayers' pockets." He told the
story before various meetings which he ^addressed in the campaign. It
involved complicated details of property yalue representations, which he
made interesting with his pious show of indignation over the Hill
morality. The surplus profit which the vigilant City Manager said he
kept from Hill's stepson amounted to a few thousand dollars.

The Citizens debated the question whether they should conduct an
old-fashioned slambang campaign to match the colorful tactics of the
opposition, or a dignified campaign more in keeping with the character
of their candidate for mayor, Dr. Hill. They finally decided to have both,
with the huffing and puffing to be provided by Colonel Frederick E.
Whitten, the Citizens' personality boy, called the LaGuardia o Kansas
City.

Colonel Whitten, a young lawyer, reserve officer and veteran of the
First World War, concentrated his full attention on McElroy, or Snag-
boat Hank. His appellation for the City Manager had its origin in the
fact that McElroy used city funds to build a boat, the Mayflower, which
the Citizens described as a pleasure craft for McElroy and friends and
which McElroy said was a snagboat on the Blue River restoration project
under the Ten-Year-Bond Program.

Whitten was assigned .the agreeable task of showing that a snagboat
owner belonged to a much lower order than a squaw man in the catalog
of political name calling; and what he lacked in imagination he made
up in enthusiasm. "Every time Snagboat Hank opens his big mouth he
gets both feet in it," he shouted, and the crowds roared approval.

234 TOM'S TOWN

The Colonel, a Democrat who had campaigned for the Pendergast
ticket four years earlier, got some of the nonpartisan stuffing knocked
out of him when he went blustering into the City Manager's office to
demand that he be allowed to examine the city's garbage contracts and
the audit.

"I am here not as a candidate but as a citizen, a taxpayer . . ." the
Colonel began.

"Let's stick to the truth," the Judge flared. "You are here as a candidate.
You probably are an honorable man as a citizen, a taxpayer and a
lawyer, but as a candidate you don't tell the truth."

The City Manager brusquely dismissed his visitor and would not let
the local LaGuardia examine the city books but, he added, he might
permit some one else to see them if he liked his looks. The embarrassed
pride of the Citizens retired and the N.Y.M. selected one of its most per-
sonable youths, Harold R. Jones, twenty-five years old, to call on the
City Manager for the controversial data. Mr. Jones, a Harvard man and
one of the original N.Y.M. boys, was received with great courtesy by
McElroy and Mayor Smith, and given an eloquent lecture on the beauties
of the garbage contract, the budget and the audit, but shown no records.

All this was for the benefit of the crowds, a part of the general action
in which the cagey Judge consistently confounded the amateurs. The
main struggle, which went on both out front and behind the scenes, was
centered in the business community. It was a fight that began long before
the climax of March, 1934. Two years earlier the administration had
clashed with large business interests when McElroy defied the Real
Estate Board, successfully resisting a determined demand for a tax re-
duction to keep municipal affairs synchronized with the downward
spiral that was then whirling toward the bottom of the bank crisis pre-
ceding the inauguration of Roosevelt. Instead of a tax cut, McElroy re-
sponded with a small increase in the general property levy. This was the
first time that McElroy had resisted the Real Estate Board, but he was
showing an attitude that grew until he became very difficult for business
interests that weren't in the good graces of the organization.

The Real Estate Board picked a poor time for a showdown on tax re-
lief. There were, of course, extravagance and boodle in the city's opera-
tion, but they were still so well concealed that the Board could not make

THE HEART OF AMERICA 235

a .convincing showing that economies were in order, and its demand for
a tax cut was interpreted as a demand for wage cutting and reduction of
essential city services. Organized labor stepped into the contest to back
the City Manager on the tax matter, the Real Estate Board took itself
back to its councils to ponder the city administration's new line, and the
N.Y.M. soon thereafter took form to channelize growing discontent

The defeat suffered by the Real Estate Board in its tax-relief plan was
not alone enough to provoke the uprising that followed. Signs multiplied
on every side that the machine had embarked on a vast scheme to use
every resource at its disposal to purchase the favor of cheaply bought
voters on one hand and to enrich large politically favored individuals on
the other hand. By 1934, it was clear to every sober person who knew
the main facts of the situation that the Pendergast monopoly was an
economic monstrosity.

In order to sustain itself both politically and economically, the boss
organization invaded private business on an increasingly widening scale.
Commercial, financial and manufacturing concerns that called on the
administration for special services, like getting an ordinance passed, or
a building permit expedited or a tax assessment adjusted, found them-
selves called on in turn to give jobs and contracts to people in good
standing with the organization. In the 1934 campaign, N.YJM* speakers
declared that their opponents produced fifty thousand to sixty thousand
votes through the merger of business and government, estimating that
the organization controlled between five and six thousand jobs in private
business and a like number in city and county administrations, each job
being "required to deliver five votes.

As the campaign wore on, it became apparent that only a part of the
business community was joining the crusade. Fear of reprisals and the
conventional aloofness of business to direct political action represented
only a part of the reason for the failure of the propertied people to dose
ranks. The machine faction had been allowed to become so entrenched
that it had permanently split the business community.

The Citizens played their trump card when Ewing Y, Mitchell, assis-
tant Secretary of Commerce, came from Washington to denounce Pen-
dergast and read the entire list of charges against machine rule. The
Fusion-Citizens attempted to don the Roosevelt New Deal mantle for

23 6 TOM'S TOWN

/ "

the moment, but it fitted awkwardly, not to say grotesquely. There were
few genuine liberals among the N.Y.M. or the Citizens, and Mitchell
himself found the Rooseveltian philosophy so unpalatable that he
bolted the Democratic Party in 1936 and ran for political office as a
Republican in 1940. He was booted out of Roosevelt's Little Cabinet in
1935. An attempt was made to represent this action as reprisal for his
intervention in the Kansas City campaign in 1934, but the primary cause
of his removal was his private quarrel with Secretary Roper and his dis-
agreement with New Dealers.

When the Assistant Secretary entered the '34 campaign, he came with
the prespge of one who was high in the administration and who had
served as Roosevelt's pre-convention manager in Missouri in 1932. His
differences with Roper and the President had not yet come to public
attention. Pendergast was so disturbed by the impression which the
Mitchell visit created that he prevailed on his good friend, Jim Farley, to
issue a statement that Mitchell spoke for himself alone, and a White
House spokesman announced that the administration still adhered to
the old rule against interference in local political fights. However, the
impression of Washington disfavor for Pendergast lingered, to be re-
vived ,and strengthened by later events.

Assistant Secretary Mitchell, a Springfield, Missouri, Democrat, used
the evidence developed by two grand juries to make the point that crime
and boodling found here made the Tammany machine in New York,
the Vare machine in Philadelphia, the Mellon machine in Pittsburgh
and the St. Louis machine smalltime outfits compared with the Pender-
gast contraption. The men at 1908 Main Street replied with a statement
to the press.

"Kansas City under the Democratic Party has better police protection
and there is less crime committed here than in any city of its size or larger
in the United States," said Boss Pendergast, who was beginning to re-
peat himself.

To show his followers his complete confidence, he concluded:

"My final answer to this gentleman is for him to read thie Kansas City
papers the day after our city election."

City Manager McElroy took his cue from the Boss. To Dr. Hill's
charges of payroll padding, enrichment of favored contractors, using

THE HEART OF AMERICA 237

the taxing and licensing powers to compel political subservience, jug-
gling of funds, illegal use of the gasoline tax fund and other funds, failure
to pay more than six million sinking fund charges, misuse of bond funds,
profitable trading in building permits, failure to make a proper audit,
etc., etc., Snagboat Hank responded by advising Dr. Hill to read the elec-
tion returns in the newspapers.

ELECTION DAY

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH of March, 1934, brought good election weather,
with sun and a snap in the air. When the first voters went to the polls
the mercury stood at ten degrees below freezing. It rose slowly through
the day to stop at forty-four.

Weeks of campaigning had produced a feeling of vast tension through-
out the city, and the sense of alarm was heightened by numerous and
widespread signs and portents of the universal crisis attending the ad-
vance of the Kansas City factions toward the day of decision. "

Physical force had entered the contest after N.Y.M. undertook extraor-
dinary measures to supervise the registration of voters, arming many
of their members with cameras, which they used to photograph repeaters.
They continued their detective work to gather other evidence of false
registration, producing a formidable list of alleged ghost voters. There
were numerous reports that N.Y.M. workers had been threatened and
assaulted and the excitement mounted when N.Y.M. leaders charged
that police and North Side bullies intimidated many individuals into
repudiating affidavits of false registration. Despite the interference,
N.Y.M. routed many ghosts and the registration ended with a strike-off
of 88,107 names, the largest in Kansas City history. However, all this
was insufficient to arrest the rising vote trend produced by the machine
and the registration finally totaled approximately 244,000,' a new record
for the city and a figure that represented well over half the entire
population.

The independent Republican organization in the contest gave some
comfort to the opposition by challenging the credentials of the N.Y.M.-
Chizens election workers and seeking an injunction to prevent the

238 TOM'S TOWN

Election Board from issuing election supplies 'to Citizens judges and
clerks. The injunction was denied but the proceeding gave some Demo-
crats an idea for a new form of harassment. On primary day, many
Citizens Party workers arrived at the polls to find their places pre-
empted by strangers with faked credentials. This provoked numerous
arguments and fights, including a brawl involving twelve battlers when
Citizens went to a voting booth on East Eighteenth Street to investigate
the ejection of their challengers.

When the primary ballots were counted, the Democrats were more
than 38,000 ahead of the Citizens, Mayor Smith having 103,616 against
65,363 for his rival, Dr. Hill Clark E. Jacoby, the third candidate for
mayor, polled 4,373.

Under the Kansas City election system for municipal contests, the
primary served to nominate the candidates winning first and second
places in the voting. Although the 1934 primary results forecast an easy
victory for the Democratic ticket as a whole in the runoflf or final elec-
tion, there was no slackening in the campaigning for the outcome in a
few Council races remained in doubt.

Following the primary the Citizens filed hundreds of affidavits cover-
ing sluggings and various other acts of terrorism at the polls. A Service-
men's League then appeared on the scene as the N.Y.M. and Citizens
answer to the bullies from the North Side. The League recruited war
veterans for service as election workers and watchers. It issued a ques-
tionnaire asking these men to list any firearms they possessed* The
Democrats exploited this slip, former Senator Reed and other party
orators declaring that the Citizens were organizing a Young Civil Army
patterned after the Blackshirts and the Brownshirts of Europe. Leaders
of the Citizens disavowed any connection with the League and Senator
Reed accepted publicly the disclaimer of Alex S. Rankin, a Democrat
in the Citizens command, but the damage was done. The opposition
had its own army of toughs but didn't talk about it, and the Citizens
were stuck with blame for provocation. The Servicemen's League with-
drew from the picture after offering its assistance to the police and re-
ceiving a curt rejection.

Tension continued to grow, and the Citizens addressed fervent ap-
peals to the governor to send the National Guard to Kansas City for

THE HEART OF AMERICA 239

election day. He turned down their request after conferring with the
Election Board, saying he was satisfied there was no cause for alarm.

The oratorical battle reached its peak on a Saturday night, three days
before the election, when more than twelve thousand party workers
received final instructions. Halls in all parts o the city were crowded
with excited citizens listening to inflamed speakers. To the people in
their homes, radios blared the call to march and vote.

By chance several of the leaders of the opposing groups met in the
studios of the Star's radio station, WDAF, on election eve. They b&wed,
smiled, spoke and shook hands after giving their final radio appeals to
the voters. That was about twelve hours before the shooting started.

In the editorial room of the Star, the first reports of election progress
were assembled for the noon edition of Tuesday, March 27, scheduled to
reach the streets shortly before eleven o'clock. Calls to various key pre-
cincts revealed an exceedingly heavy vote, for the morning hours. Re-
ports from N.Y.M. and Citizens leaders who visited or telephoned the
Star office disclosed uncommon activity in the machine-dominated down-
town precincts. Scores of motor cars, some occupied by Citizens* workers
and more filled with their opponents, cruised over these areas. They
gave the streets the aspect of a battleground with the opposing armies
maneuvering for position. But the unnatural peace with which the day
began remained unbroken when the Star's political reporter sat down to
write his lead for the noon.

The noon was going to press when Justin D. Bowersock, a reporter
assigned to the downtown precincts-run for the day, dashed into the city
room. His face was blanched, his hair tousled and there was blood on his
forehead.

"They're after me," Bowersock shouted. "They're trying to kill me!"

It seemed that everybody in the large room ducked, but in a moment
Bowersock was surrounded by editors, rewrite men and copyreaders. He
was so nervous and breathless that for a minute he could give no co-
herent explanation of what was wrong. Sox was a reporter of fertile
imagination and dramatic tendencies, but this was no act. The blood
on his forehead was real.

Two figures appeared running through the door through which

240 TOM'S TOWN

Bowersock had just entered. Editors, rewrite men and copyreaders
looked for a place to hide. A shout went up when the newcomers were
recognized as copyboys and a nervous laugh swept through the office,
breaking the tension.

Bowersock told his story in^short takes and a bulletin on his experience
appeared in the first edition. Edition followed edition with accounts of
fresh disturbances, growing in violence as the day advanced, and the
turmoil in the city room didn't slacken until the following morning. The
Star posted notice of a five-thousand-dollar reward for the assailants of
its reporter along with the news of the attack on him and two com-
panions.

Sox spilled first blood for the Citizens when he went to the near North
Side to check the polling places for reports of vote repeating. He made
the tactical error of joining the company of young Dr. Arthur Wells,
Citizens' candidate for councilman from the First District, who was a
marked man that day. They were accompanied by Lloyd Cole, a former
policeman and a Citizens* worker, and rode in Bowersock's car to a voting
booth at Ninth Street and Troost Avenue, where Ehr. Wells intended
to investigate rumors of repeating. The reporter was on a newspaper
assignment, not electioneering, but a group of Democratic muscle boys
didn't wait to ask questions when they observed him with Wells and
Cole. Even if they had recognized him as a Starman it is doubtful if
they would have been more restrained, for the paper's vigorous work
for the reform had made it very unpopular with the gangsters. The news-
paperman's car was trailed from the booth by two carloads of hoodlums,
who riddled it with bullets and ran it down after a block's chase. All
three of the fleeing men were slugged, Dr. Wells being injured so severely
that he was taken to a hospital. Bowersock escaped by leaping into the
car of another Citizens' worker who was passing the scene. Then began
a flight of more than a mile, with two gunmen in one car racing to over-
take the retreating journalist. He was followed all the way to the Star
Building, where Sox leaped from his rescuer's car and dashed inside
with one of the gunmen at his heels to the entrance of the building.

Excitement over the Bowersock incident had not begun to settle when
the Star's editor, H. J. Haskell, loped into the office in a state of great -

THlk HEART OF AMERICA 241

agitation. He had just received word that his Negro chauffeur, James
Washington, had been beaten and shot at while driving the Haskell car
to the polls with a load of Citizens* voters. The Haskell automobile was
run down in an alley near Thirty-first Street and Linwood Boulevard, a
business and apartment center. Washington was seized and beaten and
escaped by running through yards of homes in the neighborhood.

A Citizens' delegation called on Police Director Reppert to demand
better police supervision but he refused to see them.

The hotshot telephone on the Star's city desk rang with a report of
murder. The presses stopped and there was a makeover flashing the news
that William Finley had been killed at 1901 East Twenty-fourth Street
by an Italian gang that invaded the voting place there. Finley, a Demo-
cratic precinct captain and a Negro, lost his life trying to defend a
Negro election judge singled out for a beating by the gang. Finley drew
a revolver but the gangsters shot first.

Citizens' leaders sent telegrams to Governor Park demanding that
National Guardsmen be called out. He refused to intervene.

Hundreds of armed men rode in black cars, roving the North Side,
West, Northeast and Southeast sections. Many of their cars carried no
license plates, passing traffic officers and police stations without molesta-
tion.

The police made fourteen arrests, twelve of them on the South Side.
Those arrested were working for the Citizens and were suspected by the
zealous officers of contemplating intimidation. All were released.-

The 7 P.M. edition of the Star went to press shortly after six o'clock,
carrying a late round-up of the voting progress. All records were being
smashed and the total would go beyond the previous high figure of
219,000 in November, 1932. (It went to 222,866.) An interesting detail
of this late story was a report that C. R. Benton, Democratic candidate
for councilman in the Second District, was being knifed in a row be-
tween minor Democratic factional leaders. When newsboys on Twelfth
Street were calling the headlines of the 7 P. M. edition, the quarrel over
Benton reached its climax in the murder of three persons near a voting
booth five miles southeast of the downtown section.

The story of what happened was told in extras. John Gadwood, a lieu-

24 2 TOM'S TOWN

tenant in the Kelly group of the Shannon Rabbit faction, rode with
terrorists filling three cars to a polling place on Swope Parkway, in a
residential neighborhood, to punish Deputy Sheriff Lee Flacy for defying
orders to work against Candidate Benton. Benton was marked for
knifing because he belonged to the Johnson group of the Shannon fac-
tion, and the Kelly boys were warring against that group because L. C.
Johnson, director of the Fire Department, had displaced Kelly in Shan-
non's favor.

Gadwood's party found Deputy Sheriff Flacy eating a sandwich in a
restaurant near the voting booth. They called him to the rear of the res-
taurant, quarreled with him and shot him. They ran from the place and
Flacy limped afted them. At the doorway he stood firing his pistol at the
fleeing cars. The gunmen returned the fire and Flacy fell. He died several
hours later in a hospital, leaving his bride of seventeen days. Revolver and
shotgun fire from the gunmen struck P. W. Oldham, a neighborhood
hardware store owner, who was closing his store for the evening. He was
killed instantly. One of the cars of the gangsters overturned in front of
a Catholic school when its driver attempted to turn it sharply at high
speed. In the rear seat was Larry Cappo, a member of the Joe Lusco mob,
aligned with the Cas Welch Democratic faction. He was dying from one
of the bullets Flacy had fired.

Morning editions carried the score: Four slain, eleven severely injured,
bruises, black eyes and cracked heads too numerous to be estimated. The
Pendergast ticket had been returned to office by a margin of 59,000 votes
for its candidate for mayor, retaining seven places in the nine-man Coun-
cil. The Citizens won two Council places, for D. S. Adams and Frank
H, Backstrom, the margin of victory in the second place being provided
by the Democratic factional row which led to the deaths of three persons.

There was one other gain for the Citizens, a victory of slight political
significance but one which gave intense satisfaction to a certain element
of N.Y.M, Miss Sidney May Smith, Junior Leaguer, had outfoxed T. J.
Pendergast himself in a race to be Voter No. i in the Eighth Precinct of
the Eighth Ward, a decorous South Side neighborhood. When Boss
Pendergast arrived at the booth at six o'clock in the morning he fouqd a
group of N.Y.M. girls, headed by Miss Smith, lined up before him. A
Democratic judge explained the situation to the young ladies. It was

THE HEART OF AMERICA 243

sentiment and tradition with the Boss, who had been Voter No. i in this
precinct for the last several elections, and would they like to stand aside
so he could keep his record clean ? They wouldn't and they didn't. Big
Tom voted No. 5 and Miss Smith got her picture in the paper.

*

THE SHOWDOWN

THE HUE and cry that arose over the conduct of the election was suffi-
ciently intense and loud to have produced a revolution, which it failed to
do. Fire was directed principally against Police Director Reppert and
Judge McElroy, who met the situation with his usual poise and resource-
fulness. The City Manager was disturbed by neither the local nor
national commotion provoked by the Kansas City disorders. In Wash-
ington, Senator Royal S. Copeland of New York announced that his
Senate Crime Investigation Committee would come to Kansas City and
the Judge advised the Senator to take castor oil. On second thought,
he welcomed the Senator's Committee to town and urged Copeland, in
a manner that was not lost upon those familiar with City Hall ways, to
reveal the names of persons who had informed him of local conditions.

N.YJM. held a post-election mass meeting and proclaimed its inten-
tion to march on to the next battle. The crowd that filled Ivanhoe Temple
roared itself hoarse for Joe Fennelly, Dr. Hill, Colonel Whitten, Alex
Rankin, Louis G. Lower, Webster Townley, Councilmen-elect Adams
and Backstrom. William E. Kemp (who became Kansas City's mayor
on the Citizens' ticket twelve years later) spoke for a permanent regis-
tration law and Fennelly announced that N.Y.M. would immediately
open a campaign for its adoption. There was talk of plans for a recall
election in six months and the rally ended with a demonstration pro-
voked by a speech demanding the election of a Legislature that would
impeach Governor Park, the figurehead in Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was
the last important show of force by N.Y.M.

Speakers at the N.Y.M. rally listed several important gains made by
the Pendergast opposition in this campaign. They dwelt upon the election
of two Fusion men to the Council and the events which had aroused the
public to the need for a permanent registration law to eliminate the

244 TOM'S TOWN

frauds that helped the machine to perpetuate itself in power. (Estimates
of the number of ghost votes in the recent balloting ran as high as fifty
thousand.) They reviewed the disclosures and incidents which ripped
the last cover from boss rule. They paid insufficient attention, how-
ever, to the most important development of the campaign, which was the
entry of the Star for a showdown battle with Pendergast.

On election day the period of half-truce and indecision finally ended.
There would be no more temporizing or compromises, and no more pro-
motions of Judge McElroy. The Star had entered the campaign support-
ing the Citizens-Fusion ticket in a moderate, dignified fashion, and
ended it prepared for a long and bitter struggle whose outcome could
not be foreseen in 1934. On election day the Pendergast challenge for a
slugging match to the finish was given and accepted. The N.Y.M. and
many of the figures in the 1934 fracas would be forgotten, but the news-
paper would spearhead the opposition for the battles of '36, '38, '40 and
later. It went into that contest with the fighting spirit of old Baron
Nelson, and with perhaps more generalship than the Old Man had ex-
hibited.

The Star was now directed not by one powerful individual but by a
quartet who had come up under Nelson Longan, Haskell, McCollum
and Roberts. They were men of strong opinions, self-assertive, and full of
vinegar.

First round in the new struggle between the newspaper and the po-
litical machine was well under way by the time that the N.YJM. staged
the post-election rally which was in effect its farewell. During the two
weeks between the election and the day when the new Council was
sworn in, the newspaper editors and the strategists at 1908 Main engaged
in a battle of wits that was distinguished by the skill displayed on both
sides. The general public could see only. the surface manifestations or re-
sults of the planning and intrigue that went on behind the scenes, but
even from the outside it was apparent that this was a contest of equals
in the art of political maneuvering.

The Star opened with an editorial blast demanding that the police
department be reorganized to clean up the city. This was Pendergast's
most vulnerable point not only because of the public agitation over the
election murders and crime conditions generally, but also because a fac-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 245

tional dispute within the Democratic organization revolved around
Police Director Reppert. Cas Welch, the Fifteen Street boss, who con-
trolled two councilmen in the new administration, objected to Reppert.

Playing up the factional row, the Star pointed out that Big Tom was
sure of only three votes in the new Council A. N. Gossett, Charlie
Clark and Ruby D. Garrett. Mayor Smith was also a Pendergast man
but it was fondly believed he might be inclined to throw his one vote to
the opposition if a revolt looked promising. The Citizens, with two
votes, could deprive McElroy of a working majority in the Council if
they could promote a coalition including Mayor Smith, Cas Welch's
two councilmen and the one councilman controlled by Shannon.

Speculative stories covering this situation, designed to spread suspicion
and dismay among the machine factions, were given conspicuous posi-
tion, and for a few days it was made to appear that a permanent breach
in the machine might develop. Attention was centered on Mayor Smith
in an effort to stampede him into rebellious action. The Star interviewed
the diminutive mayor whom McElroy called "Boss," presenting him flat-
teringly in the role of an independent and forceful executive. It followed
that with a long story announcing that the Honorable Bryce Smith had
at last seized control of the City Hall from McElroy after being "side-
tracked, ignored and humiliated for four years.'* The stratagem was
successful to the point that Mr. Smith kept up the independent pose for
four days during which he was publicly committed to a permanent regis-
tration law.

At the same time public indignation against the machine was kept
alive by a series of news stories that were more eloquent and much more
provocative than any fire-eating editorial could have been. There were
stories recounting the activities of Sheriff Tom Bash, a member of the
Rabbit faction, in his effort to track down the election-day slayers and
hoodlums, drawing a glaring contrast to the dereliction of the police.
There were stories of the neighborhood mourning for the election-
murder victims and more stories along the same line when funeral
services were held for them. On Good Friday, Dr. Harry Clayton Rogers,
pastor of the Linwood Presbyterian Church, preached a "Black Friday"
sermon on the crimes of Kansas City. His sermon, featured on page one,

246 TOM'S TOWN

was a signal for the pulpit battery of the Protestant brotherhood to go
into action.

The next day Police Director Reppert resigned with a sigh of relief.

It appeared to the spectators that the revolt was beginning to roll, al-
though in fact the dropping of Reppert meant that a deal had been made
patching up the rift in the machine rather than that the boys were run-
ning for cover. The Star, the Republicans and the Citizens whooped for
more blood, turning their full fire directly on McElroy, and the minis-
terial contingent responded with a broadside from the Sunday morning
pulpits. The next day, the Ministerial Alliance, representing one hundred
and four Protestant churches, met and demanded the ouster of McElroy.

The administration was then ready to make its stand. It led off with a
show of shame and remorse over the election day murders when Council-
man Gossett went before the last meeting of the old City Council wifh
an impassioned declaration for a purified police force and a permanent
registration law. That was the extent of the organization's concession
to the public clamor directed by the Star.

Farmer Al obviously was deeply moved by his recital of the evils
brought to light in the campaign. "I feel like resigning my position,
Mr. Mayor," he said, "and am only deterred from doing so by my con-
viction that it would be a sign of weakness, and I shall, therefore,
continue my endeavors to serve the people of Kansas City as best I may."

Reformation of the Police Department was immediately manifested by
the dropping of numerous officers in the lower brackets, a series of liquor
raids, tightening of regulations on pool halls and the setting of police
traps for motorists who had failed to purchase license tags all of them
measures well calculated to make reform unpopular with a large element
of the population. Police contributed further to the cooling of the public
mood when they manhandled John Gadwood, following his arrest for
the election-day murder of Deputy Lee Flacy. Two detectives were fired
for beating up Gadwood, and McElroy and the police heads publicly
deplored the resort to third-degree tactics. Although it was difficult to
imagine that the two detectives acted without orders from above, it was
possible that they were two Pendergast loyalists who decided to sacrifice
themselves in order to strike a double blow for their side. In maltreating

THE HEART OF AMERICA 247

Gadwood, they were paying off a petty figure in a minor Democratic fac-
tion who had got the Goat boss into deep trouble and at the same time
provoking a reaction to the demand for greater zeal on the part of the
police.

A curious incident served to deflect some of the public anger from
Judge McElroy himself. At the height of the clamor against him some-
one fired a bullet through the front window of his home while he and
,his daughter were in an adjoining room. The following night Mary
McElroy answered the telephone and a man's voice said : "We never miss
a second time," Everyone was reminded, o course, of the McElroys*
troubles the year before, when Mary McElroy was kidnaped from her
home and held a prisoner overnight until thirty thousand dollars ran-
som was paid. After the shooting, the Star printed an editorial suggest-
ing that the harassment of the Judge was an effort to defame the city,
and a relaxing of the pressure on the City Manager immediately was
noticed.

All of these incidents had a sobering effect on the citizens, suggesting
in various ways that the cleanup agitation was producing extreme reac-
tions that were neither intended nor desired.

Four days before the new Council was to meet, it was announced that
all differences within the machine had been ironed out with the retire-
ment of Reppert and that McElroy would be retained for his third
four-year term as city manager. The Star shifted its line of attack to con-
centrate on control of the Police Department, starting agitation for im-
portation of an Army officer as police director. Mr. McElroy cut that hope
short and for the moment confounded his critics on the Star by picking
a former reporter on the Star's staff, one Otto P. Higgias, for the police
director's post.

Mr. Higgins carried no great weight with the Star management, but
he was personally popular with the staff and his Star background made
it embarrassing for the newspaper to attack him or even express regret
over his appointment.

All of which explains why the great reform of 1934 ended with the
selection of the man who soon became a target of the clean-up people
and who eventually produced the biggest scandal in the Police Depart-
ment.

248 TOM'S TOWN

DEATH AND BROTHER JOHN

SOMEDAY, perhaps a hundred years hence when the Hollywood influence
has begun to decline, praise the Lord, it may be possible to write an ade-
quate account of that significant American type known as the gangster*
The wish for more intelligent treatment than is now possible comes up
in connection with this all-too-brief chapter on Johnny Lazia, whose re-
markable career reached its inevitable conclusion in the months immedi-
ately following the reform efforts and election massacre of 1934.

The change in police command was not the thing that adversely af-
fected the fortunes of Lazia at this time. He continued to call at the
City Hall and police headquarters and the new police director followed
the established policy of consulting the North Side chieftain on the ap-
pointment of officers and the regulation of crime. However, the serious
trouble that soon developed for the Italian boss did have some connection
with the recently suppressed political revolt against the administration,
for it was intimately related to the complicated functioning of Home
Rule as directed by Pendergast, McElroy and Lazia. The Lazia affair
also served as the first large illustration of the personal disaster that was
in the making for the principal figures in the machine.

In the fateful month of July, 1934, Johnny Lazi^ was thirty-seven years
old, one of the most successful and probably the most discussed citizen of
Kansas City. He drew even more popular attention than either Boss
Pendergast or Judge McElroy. His criminal background and racketeer
reputation were not the only things that made him fascinating to the
curious public. Johnny also had personality. In fact, he had charm. He
looked amiable and modest. He spoke good English, told humorous
stories, smiled often behind his rimless eyeglasses and chewed gum con-
stantly. There was little about his appearance and manners to stamp him
as a gang leader, a man of immigrant stock who had risen from the
underworld to a commanding position in political and business circles
in a mid-American city. t

Unlike the underworld hero of movies and books, Lazia did not go in
for mystery and aloofness. True, he rode in a bulletproof motor car and

THE HEART OF AMERICA 249

was constantly attended by his portly, solemn bodyguard, Big Charley
Carollo. But these were minimum concessions to the dramatic require-
ments of his role, for purposes of safety. Despite this handicap, Lazia
managed to make himself seen in public, for he wanted to be known as
a man about town. He went to the night spots, the sports shows and
gambling places, and on week ends he went with some of his boys to
his cottage on Lake Lotawana, where he raced his high-powered speed-
boat and splashed waves on the best people from Kansas City who main-
tained summer homes in this resort. He lived in an apartment on Armour
Boulevard with his pretty wife, who made a large splash with the dough
that Johnny generously provided.

The doings of Johnny Lazia at the height of his career and the sensa-
tional events of his last days so excited the popular imagination that little
or no attention was paid to the equally interesting story of his beginning
and his rise to power. As a result, a host of questions about him, his or-
ganization, his friendship with Pendergast, his political and business
connections with the Boss and other leaders in the town, his influence and
his meaning in American life have been incompletely answered or not
answered at all. The general impression that has been left is that this son
of immigrants was an exceptional individual who rose through excep-
tional circumstances to the place he occupied. However, enough facts
about him are known to make it clear that Johnny Lazia was no accident.
Somewhat exceptional he may have been in his own small circle, but
there was nothing very strange about the circumstances. Some of the in-
cidents of his rise were odd or melodramatic, but the conditions that
produced the North Side boss had been familiar features of American life
for many years and haven't been greatly modified since 1934.

Kansas City's Little Italy was a trouble spot that entered its darkest
period when Lazia was a boy. Toil, poverty and crime were the daily
story of the congested district east of Market Square on the North Side.
By 1920 the number of first and second generation Italians in Kansas
City had been reduced to 6,116, but before the' First World War it was
estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 persons lived in the narrow
confines of Little Italy. Not all of them were Italians. Negroes encroached
on the neighborhood. Segregated themselves and treated daily to dis-
crimination in work and social life, the Italians turned with fury on their

2 5 o TOM'S TOWN

colored neighbors. Homes of Negroes were dynamited in an effort to
frighten them off and murders grew out of this racial antagonism be-
tween the two groups that were the chief victims of discrimination im-
posed by the white Americans.

The Italians made a large stir in politics and crime for their numbers,
but not simply because they had a special talent for these pursuits. Oppor-
tunities and rewards for common laborers and hucksters were decidedly
limited while the field in vice and banditry was booming. The Mafia
appeared to regulate the community with dagger, pistol and bomb. In
the decade ending in 1916, the year that Johnny Lazia first figured in the
crime news, there had been forty unsolved murders on the North Side.
There were sporadic efforts to break up the Black Hand and suppress
other kinds of criminals, but for the most part the busy citizens living
outside the North Side paid little attention to the newcomers so long as
the violence and misery were confined to Little Italy.

In his youth, Johnny Lazia, son of a laborer, a boy whose education
did not extend beyond the eighth grade, attracted the favorable attention
of influential men with his brightness, friendliness and political precocity.
He obtained a clerk's job in the office of a reputable law firm, studied law
and seemed destined for a legal career until caught in the act of banditry.
He staged a holdup in which he collected two hundred and fifty dollars,
a diamond stickpin and a watch, and was captured in a revolver battle
with Captain John Ennis. When he was eighteen years old he was sen-
tenced to fifteen years in the Missouri penitentiary. He was even then a
figure of consequence in political and gang circles, a fact that was im-
pressed on the public by incident^ attending his prosecution and im-
prisonment. Police reported the discovery of a plot to shoot up the justice
of peace court where Lazia was to be arraigned and another plot to de-
liver him from jail. The jury that convicted him was given a special
guard after receiving death threats. The presiding judge remitted three
years of Lazia's sentence, reducing it to twelve years, and he served only
eight months and seven days. His prison record was distinguished by his
good behavior and efficiency as a bookkeeper. His parole was recom-
mended by the county attorney of Jackson County and two other party
leaders, and was granted by another good Democrat, the lieutenant gov-
ernor, acting as the chief executive in -the governor's absence from the

THE HEART OF AMERICA 251

state. The acting governor justified his haste in this case as "a war
measure."

. Lazia returned to Kansas City two months before the war ended, re-
entering civil life at the moment when the general disturbance provoked
by the military conflict, Prohibition and the capitalist inflation-deflation
cycle was just getting under way. He announced that "the wild boy"
of the recent holdup had died in prison. Having been such a conspicuous
beneficiary of political influence, he concentrated on the task of political
organization, doing favors, lending money, keeping boys out of jail. He
dabbled in real estate and also took an interest in gambling and boot-
legging but managed to keep beyond the clutches of the law. In one case
he was indicted with a group of men in a liquor conspiracy but was freed
when Carollo, his bodyguard, took the rap a not-very-heavy one.

Lazia's political leadership of the North Side was established in 1928
in an election called to vote on a proposed twenty-eight-and-one-half-
million-dollar bond issue. The city rejected most of the bonds and Lazia
provided most of the excitement. His fight was made on a Home Rule
issue for the Italian community, Lazia's faction challenging the absentee
over lordship of Mike Ross, a Goat leader who long had controlled Little
Italy before he moved from the North to the South Side. His place was
usurped by Lazia through the use of strongarm tactics. Several of Ross's
old lieutenants were kidnaped, one was struck on the head with a re-
volver and another barely missed a bullet. When the polls closed, it was
found that Lazia's boys had delivered more votes and the defeated group
attended a mass meeting in Ringside Hall to hail the new leader. A band
played, "Here Comes the King," while the loyal followers shouted "Our
Johnny" and "You tell 'em, J'ohnny."

Boss Pendergast gave an interview to the press in which he indicated
his displeasure over the riotous events on the North Side a$d let it be
known he would stand by the deposed Mike Ross, with whom he had
long enjoyed profitable relations in the concrete business. But Johnny
used his charm as well as his power, and he and Boss Tom soon were fast
friends. In later years it was rumored that they had quarreled, and that
Johnny had stabbed Tom, but there was never any evidence of such a
fight and their relationship remained unbroken to the end.

Force was the instrument by which Lazia ruled, but force alone did

252 TOM'S TOWN

not account for his success. He had real organizing and executive ability
in undertakings calling for something more than the application of fists
and bullets. He mapped out projects for enterprises that would give
profitable employment to his following. He was resourceful in working
out schemes to take care of his men when they got into trouble. He built
up his organization to the point where it was both a political force and
a large economic factor in the life of the community. To those who
opposed him and stood in his way, he was cruel and ruthless, but to
those who acknowledged his leadership and served his purposes he was
both wise arbiter and able protector. His henchmen formed a cult of
admirers, called him Brother John in recognition of various services of a
generous and benevolent nature that were hidden from people outside
his circle. Brother John supported the cause of charity for citizens of his
realm, who were considered deserving by the North Side Democratic
Club. Brother John always had a coin for a panhandler and was lajrge
handed with his friends. Brother John was an amusing and considerate
companion. Women, particularly women of the South Side who met him
or saw him on occasions when their husbands were discussing business
or political affairs with the North Side leader, thought him fascinating.
Brother John, it was said, objected to "rough stuff" and wanted peace
and order. He wanted to lift himself and some of his people to a higher
place in the economic and social scale. Grinning, speaking softly, ex-
changing wisecracks, chewing his gum, Brother John ingratiated himself
with many persons in high places while not relaxing the rule of force
that operated through the North Side Democratic Club. He advanced to
power with the same catlike tread that distinguished the gait of his trim
one-hundred-and-f orty-pound figure.

McElroy's Home Rule greatly increased Lazia's responsibilities. It was
said at the City Hall and police headquarters that the new policy of wink-
ing at "minor infractions" and concentrating on major crime had brought
a reduction in "rough stuff." Lazia was entitled to some credit for that
alleged improvement, for he was one of three who had a voice in naming
men to the Police Department, and the turnover was large and rapid.
The figures on crime reduction were not very reassuring to the public,
however, for there were still a large number of major crimes and the new
crime control commission was having obvious difficulty in getting co-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 253

operation from some important elements of the underworld. Compe-
tition for the gambling and liquor concessions showed signs o increasing
rather than decreasing under the combined effect of toleration of petty
violations of the law and the monopoly organization of vice syndicates.
The underworld regulators faced a constant threat from three sides
from out-of-town criminals who showed a growing disposition to move
in and take advantage of Home Rule hospitality, from amateurs or punks
who were stimulated to emulate the big shots, and from local rivals like
the Lusco gang, allied with the Welch Democratic faction, who com-
plained that Lazia's followers got too may concessions.

An interesting commentary on the conditions under which the Home
Rule administrators labored was given by Federal Judge Merrill K Otis
of Kansas City, a distinguished advocate of speedy and stern punishment
for lawbreakers. Judge Otis, in an interview published in Lazia's last
year, tried to be as reassuring about the situation as he could, saying:

"I believe there are no more criminals today, in proportion to the whole
population, than there have ever been. I believe that ninety-five per cent,
at least, of the people of this country, both in city and country, are law
abiding. The enemies of society constitute a very small minority. ... I
am convinced that humanity is not becoming worse. There has always
been a criminal fringe, maybe five per cent, maybe less, that is causing the
trouble now. There is an alarming increase in one class of crimes only.
There is a startling increase in what we might call the big money kind
of banditry.'*

A ninety-five-per-cent law-abiding nation sounded better than saying
that more than six million Americans made a business of thievery and
murder. Five per cent of Kansas 'City's population meant that around
twenty thousand citizens were busy with schemes to rook their neighbors.
But if, as the Judge said, the total number engaged in this traffic was not
alarming, the "increase in what we might call the big money kind o
banditry" was. Both Home Rule and John Lazia were ruined by this rush
for the big money, a trend that was not entirely confined to the under-
world.

In looking for a date and an incident opening the last chapter of the
Lazia story, the eye falls on a day early in July, 1932, less than four
months after the Home Rule experiment had been inaugurated. In the

254 TOM'S TOWN

second week of July a strange event that occurred at a golf club called
attention to the fact that criminals of the big time were centering their
activities in this city, moving about with a large sense of freedom and
living in style. A public golf course that was then popular with police
officials and prominent gamblers was patronized one day by four strang-
ers who wore smart sports clothes and played a smart brand of golf.
When the round ended, three of the four were arrested by special agents
of the division of investigation, Department of Justice, waiting at the
clubhouse. The fourth, who got away, was Frank Nash, bank and mail-
train robber and killer. The other three were widely known criminals.
Among them was Harvey Bailey, one of the chief desperadoes of the
period, who was then living quietly but luxuriously in a Kansas City
apartment under an alias, posing as a businessman by the name of John
Brown.

Bailey was removed to Kansas to answer for a bank holdup and sent
to the state prison at Lansing. The golf club incident was forgotten until
it was recalled a year later as the opening round in a series of events that
tossed Kansas City into deepening turmoil, startled the nation and
spelled doom for Johnny Lazia.

Frank Nash and Harvey Bailey belonged to that weird company of
public enemies that included Fred (Killer) Burke, Machine Gun Kelly,
Wilbur Underbill, Charles (Pretty Boy) 'Floyd, Adam Richetti and
Verne C. Miller. They were boys from the farms, small towns and cities
of the Middle West, adventurous spirits of an unsettled time. Floyd,
Nash and Richetti came from Oklahoma, Underbill from Missouri.
Miller had been a sheriff at Huron, South Dakota. Bailey was a farm
boy from Sullivan County, Missouri. He hid Killer Burke on his mother's
farm after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago in 1929, in which
Burke was one of the machine gunners, feurke was captured on the
Bailey farm after he was identified by a filling station operator from a
picture of the killer in a detective magazine. *

,These dangerous men were not identified with a city gang but moved
over a large section of the country, demanding and receiving protection
from the underworld wherever they operated. At the time of his arrest in
Kansas City, Bailey was working in a large band that roved between St.
Paul, Chicago, Kansas City and Hot Springs, Arkansas, Individually the

THE HEART OF AMERICA 255

gunmen, bandits, kidnapers and killers of the road dwarfed the city type
of gangster, and their collective operations were beginning to make the
fratricidal wars of the city gangs look like a minor disturbance. They
worked individually, in teams and in family groups, as with Ma Barker
and her fearful brood. They robbed and killed with their women. Clyde
Barrow and his cigar-smoking, pistol-packing mama, Bonnie Parker,
fought their way out of a trap near Kansas City not long before they
were killed together in 1934 in a crime tour that took them over several
states of the Middle West and South. The gun moll was a familiar figure
in the police showup (as Kansas City calls the line-up). These men and
women of old American stock made it all too clear that the lawless revival
was not confined to the congested centers where the foreign-born were
segregated. They also made it clear that crime had passed beyond the
stage of local or state problem and had become a national peril.

Three days before Harvey Bailey broke out again, the Kansas City
Home Rule order was overturned by four native Americans who had
seen too many B pictures and heard about too many racketeers getting
ahead in the world. These ambitious beginners exhibited both daring and
imagination in their first and last big operation. They kidnaped Mary
McElroy, twenty-five-year-old daughter of the City Manager, taking her
from her bath to a dungeon where she was chained and held prisoner for
thirty-four hours. Their choice of setting for the crime, the home pf the
City Manager, was in a quiet but populous section of the South Side,
and the time was a Saturday morning late in May, 1933, shortly after
Judge McElroy had gone to the City Hall.

Two of the four kidnapers called at the house, posing as deliverymen
with a package for Judge McElroy's daughter. When the housekeeper
opened the door, they forced their way in, and ordered Miss McElroy to
dress and accompany them. The City Manager's daughter, who had some
of her father's sturdiness and self-composure, finished her bath, donned
a becoming summer dress, powdered her nose, adjusted her hair and
tossed a gay remark to the kidnapers when she joined them. She left the
house to be gone a day, all of one night and part of the next day.

Because the kidnapers were unknown in the underworld, the usual
channels of investigation were closed to the police and the girl's father
sweated in agony while detectives stumbled over each other seeking

256 TOM'S TOWN

vainly for a lead. The gang established contact with the Judge, bargained
with him by telephone and demanded sixty thousand dollars. He argued
them down to thirty thousand dollars, and Johnny Lazia took over the
task of collecting the ransom from his friends and followers among the
gamblers.

Reporters who visited the home found the place crowded with detec-
tives, politicians and personal friends. They also found a McElroy they
had never seen before, a gentle, pathetic old man. He was surrounded by
a large group of his political cronies who attempted to distract him with
campaign stories and jokes. The Judge held his head in his hands,
staring at the floor.

"You know, gentlemen," he said, "this is the first time in my life that
I have been unable to even put forth an effort. My Mary! I can't help
her." He began to weep.

There was a stir in the home when T. J. Pendergast arrived in person
to express his sympathy to the Judge.

When the final call came from the kidnapers, the Judge and his son
left in a car to deliver the money at the appointed place. They dashed
out together again when a telephone call informed them that Miss
McElroy had been released on a highway near a golf club in Kansas,
about four miles west of the Missouri state line. They returned her to her
home Sunday afternoon. She was weary, begrimed and breathless with
excitement but otherwise apparently unharmed.

Faced with this challenge to Home Rule, the police went to work to
make an example of the punks. The pursuit of the four amateurs was
efficient, but one got away. The prosecution of the three in hand was
swift and ruthless. Sentence of death was meted out to the leader of the
band, one of his accomplices was given a life term and the other got a
term of eight years behind bars.

Three days after the McElroy kidnaping, the roving big-time criminals
entered upon their last major offensive in the Middle West, a reign of
terror that continued more than a year until Pretty Boy Floyd and Public
Enemy No. i John Dillinger were run to earth and slain. It began some
forty miles from Kansas City in the Kansas state prison at Lansing where
eleven convicts broke up a Memorial Day baseball game, picking a tense
moment when the score stood two to two between the Topeka and Leav-

THE HEART OF AMERICA 257

en worth Legion teams in the fourth inning. They kidnaped Warden Kirk
Prather and two guards as hostages, commandeered motor cars and
roared away with a flourish of rifles and shotguns. Harvey Bailey and
Wilbur Underbill were the ringleaders of the desperate band that staged
this sensational break. The fugitives headed southward toward Okla-
homa's Cookson Hills, refuge of the outlaws of the period. Underbill
wanted to kill the hostages but Bailey calmed him down. Five of the con-
victs were recaptured in the manhunt that followed, the warden and the
two guards were rescued. The rest of the crew, including Bailey and Un-
derbill, disappeared to join up with other desperadoes in the wave of
depredations that mounted steadily in subsequent months.

High point in the crime tide was reached in Kansas City with the
Union Station Massacre the morning of June 17, 1933, when five persons
were slain.

The stage was set the night before when two of the Middle West's
most notorious killers, Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richetti, drove into
town under very peculiar circumstances. They had spent the day riding
across a large part of Missouri with Sheriff Jack Killingsworth of Polk
County, whom they had captured early in the morning at Bolivar. The
Sheriff just happened to drop into the garage of Richetti's brother in
Bolivar, and found the bandits waiting there while their car was being
repaired. They took another car, put the Sheriff in as hostage and fled. At
Clinton, Missouri, they stopped to pick up another citizen, one Mr.
Walter Griffith, who was impressed into service as chauffeur. While a
wild hunt formed in their rear, they traveled in leisure and caution
toward Kansas City. While Richetti filled himself with liquor, cursed*
roared threats and occasionally napped, Pretty Boy Floyd solemnly lec-
tured Sheriff Killingsworth on the meanness of peace officers who
hounded outlaws into crime and kept them separated from their f amilies,
and Sheriff Killingsworth tried not to look bored or disapproving at this
old number. The lecture and trip ended at 10 P.M. Sheriff Killingsworth
and Citizen Griffith were released in the West Bottoms while Floyd and
Richetti retired to a Kansas City hideout for the night.

They did not get much rest, for they were summoned to an interview
with another killer, Verne C. Miller, at a meeting which, according to
Federal government investigators, was arranged by Johnny Lazia. The

258 TOM'S TOWN

government's story of this fantastic enterprise relates that Miller on that
same night approached Lazia with the request for a couple of alert and
reliable trigger men for an important assignment. It was said that Lazia
hastily declined to furnish any of his men for the adventure but referred
Miller to the two highly recommended gunmen who had just arrived in
the Home Rule city.

Miller had been living quietly in Kansas City for several weeks before
this day, putting up in style in a Dutch Colonial house at 6612 Edgevale
Road and not attracting much attention in this highly respectable neigh-
borhood. The only thing about him that caused comment was Rex, a
large and unfriendly yellow cur, which served as his bodyguard. Miller's
vacation at this spot ended when the telephone lines between Hot
Springs, Arkansas, Joplin, Missouri, Chicago and Kansas City began to
buzz with the news in gangland code that Federal agents had captured
Frank Nash, the bank and train robber who escaped from the golf
course a year earlier when Harvey Bailey was captured. On these wires,
the plot was hatched to deliver Nash when he arrived in Kansas City the
morning of June 17, 1933, from Hot Springs, on the way to the Federal
prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, under a heavy guard of officers. The
phone calls informed Miller that he would need strong assistance in
making the delivery, hence the interview with Floyd and Richetti.

The massacre occurred in the parking lot in front of the Union Station
a few minutes after Nash, in manacles, and attended by seven officers,
walked out of the station. Miller and Floyd were armed with sub-ma-
chine guns, and Richetti had an automatic pistol. They had stationed
themselves to command the Special Agent's car in which Nash was to be
loaded for the scheduled dash to Leavenworth. Miller, it is said, started
to approach the machine with a demand that the prisoner be freed but
one of the officers fired, wounding Floyd in the shoulder, and immedi-
ately the outlaws opened fire, killing four officers and Nash, and wound-
ing two special agents. Two Kansas City police officers were among the
dead; the others were Special Agent R. J. CafFrey of the F.B.L and an
Oklahoma police chief.

The three killers vanished swiftly in their automobile but did not leave
the city immediately. Their departure was as remarkable as their en-
trance, and a detailed account o their movements may be found in the

THE HEART OF AMERICA 259

government's files. Chief witness for the government on this point was
Michael James LaCapra, alias Jimmy Needles, a figure in the Kansas
City underworld, who quarreled with Lazia not long after the massacre
occurred. He stated that Lazia arranged an escort for Floyd and Richetti
the second night after the murders. This service, he said, was arranged
by Verne Miller, who walked boldly downtown the night of the crime
looking for Lazia and finally found him with some of his cronies in the
Union Station restaurant. They had a private interview within a few
hundred feet of the scene of the massacre of the June morning, and then
Miller vamoosed, leaving the city alone the next day. A physician was
called to treat Floyd, who had lost considerable blood from his wounded
shoulder, and then a conference was held to determine whether he was
able to undertake a flight/LaCapra said this question was settled to the
satisfaction of all present when Pretty Boy asked for a machine gun^
swung it into a firing position and declared he was able to operate it ef-
ficiently. Then, said LaCapra, a party of North Side gangsters was named
by Lazia to see that Floyd and Richetti got safely out of the city.

LaCapra's version was not made public until more than a year after
the Union Station affair, but the murders provoked an immediate re-
action against Lazia and the Home Rule order. The agitation that revived
the income tax evasion case against the North Side chief, developed in
this period. Federal authorities instituted a vigorous investigation of
charges of police laxity in this case while rounding up a large group of
conspirators in the attempted delivery of Frank Nash.

Meanwhile, the roving bandits kept things stirred up round about,
the furor extending over five states. Harvey Bailey and Machine Gun
Kelly took over the main show a month later, in July, 1933, with the kid-
naping of Charles F. Urschel, Oklahoma City oil man, for two hundred
thousand dollars. That crime entailed no killings but had many extraor-
dinary angles, extending from a hideout in Texas to a pay-off in Kansas
City. Part of the ransom money, seven hundred dollars, was traced to
Ferris Anthon, a member of the Lusco mob of Kansas City. Although
this was a smalt part of the loot, it drew wide attention, for Ferris An-
thon was a central figure in the next violent explosion that brought a.
'crisis for the Police Department and the North Side Democratic Club.

City gang rivalry produced this failure in crime control, and a dispute

260 TOM'S TOWN

over alcohol rights apparently was the issue. The difference reached a
blazing peak on one of the city's residential boulevards at one fifteen
o'clock the morning of August 12, 1933, at a moment when Sheriff Tom
, Bash of Jackson County arrived on the scene, gossiping with some friends
in a car but ready for action.

A few minutes earlier, Sheriff Bash had left an ice-cream social given
by the Co-Operettes, ladies auxiliary of the Co-Operative Club. The
Sheriff attended this function both as a friend of the Co-Operettes and in
his official capacity to provide protection for the receipts from the lawn
party. Following a pleasant and successful evening, the Bash party
headed north in a car containing the Sheriff's wife and a fourteen-year-
old girl, as well as the Sheriff and a deputy, who was driving. They were
taking the receipts to the Bash home near Armour Boulevard but stopped
when they heard shots on entering the boulevard from Forest Avenue.

The shots came from a sub-machine gun a block away where Ferris
Anthon was slain in front of an apartment hotel. The assassins fled in a
car, east on Armour. Sheriff Bash seized his riot gun from the floor of
his car and dashed out to intercept the killers. They fired on him and he
returned the fire, killing two gangsters in the car. Their automobile
careened into the Bash automobile while a man on foot ran toward the
Sheriff, firing a revolver as he approached. He exhausted his bullets and
cringed in terror, pleading for his life. Sheriff Bash spared his assailant
who, upon arrest, was found to be Charles Gargotta, a Lazia lieutenant,
interrupted in the midst of an assignment to maintain underworld dis-
cipline.

Police produced a witness to save Gargotta, for some time at least.
The rescuer was an officer who perjured himself when the gunman was
first tried for attempting to kill the Sheriff. This officer, who later was
given a four-year term for perjury, testified that he found the weapon
which Gargotta was accused of firing, a hundred feet from the scene of
the shooting, so the jury was encouraged to believe that the gangster was
unarmed when he faced the Sheriff. Gargotta remained at liberty until
changed conditions moved him to plead guilty to assault with intent to
kill Tom Bash.

Sheriff Bash, a Democrat of the Rabbit faction in fural Jackson County,

THE HEART OF AMERICA 261

had little time in the following months to spend with his famous Mis-
souri foxhounds and the long-eared mules he loved. He took a large hand
in the investigation of the Union Station massacre and other crimes that
followed, and joined the cross-country hunt for Pretty^ Boy Floyd. He
was a few miles away in one of the pursuit parties when Floyd was
cornered and slain on a farm in Ohio in October, 1934.

Johnny missed the excitement of Pretty Boy's last stand owing to the
run of events which distracted the North Side chieftain in Kansas City
in the first half of 1934. In the first two months of the year, Lazia was
preoccupied with efforts to defend himself against the income tax evasion
charges that had been revived by the Federal government, and this
ended when Judge Merrill E. Otis sentenced Lazia to the Christian
County jail for one year on the first count, repeated the sentence on the
second count, but granted probation in that case, and fined him a total of
five thousand dollars.

Lazia remained at liberty, on appeal from the jail sentence, but not
at peace. His trial was followed quickly by the disturbances of the city
election campaign, and this turmoil extended well into spring. The new
arrangement under the Otto Higgins police administration had hardly
been well established when July brought the final turn for Johnny
Lazia.

Curiously, this roaring climax came at a moment of calm when it
appeared that the crisis for Home Rule and the public peace of the Middle
West had passed its zenith. Under the energetic efforts of the F.B 1., the
highway patrol and county peace officers, the threat from the desperadoes
of the road was rapidly dissipated. All of the outlaws who escaped in the
Lansing prison Memorial Day break were dead or captured. The Bar-
rows were dead. Harvey Bailey and Machine Gun Kelly were in prison
for life. Wilbur Underbill's brief life ended in the electric chair in Okla-
homa. Verne Miller had been rubbed out by an Ohio gang. And Pretty
Boy Floyd's days were numbered. It looked as if the Home Rule oper-
ators could count on having nothing more troublesome to deal with
than local disturbers of the underworld order.

Lazia stayed downtown late the night of July 9, visiting various haunts
and finding everything running smoothly. When he finally turned for
home he took a roundabout ride. He wasn't expecting trouble,"! or he was

262 TOM'S TOWN

accompanied only by his wife, Marie, and his faithful bodyguard, Ca-
rollo, who sat together in the front seat.

The Lazia car turned into the driveway of the Park Central Hotel, a
new apartment building at 300 East Armour Boulevard, and came to a
stop under the hotel canopy at approximately three o'clock the morning
of July 10. Lazia alighted from the rear seat and had just opened the
front door to assist his wife out when the night peace of this South Side
neighborhood was shattered by the drilling blast of a sub-machine gun.
One bullet almost struck Mrs. Lazia but the stream was accurately cen-
tered on Johnny. It was discovered later that the gun was one of the
weapons used in the Union Station massacre.

Before he fell, Lazia shouted a warning to his bodyguard.

"Get Marie out of here," he screamed. "Step on it, Charley."

Charley stepped on it, racing the sedan out of the driveway and al-
most colliding with the car carrying the fleeing assassins at the inter-
section of Armour and Robert Gillham Road.

Lazia was eleven hours dying in the hospital to which he was rushed.
Boss Pendergast ordered that everything possible be done to save him,
but three blood transfusions and nine physicians were not enough. While
his life ebbed, Brother John's boys,, impassive and grim-visaged youths of
indeterminable age, gathered in clusters in front of the hospital and
watched the line of politicians, businessmen, public officials, relatives
and friends of their leader moving in and out.

One of the stricken man's last statements before he lost consciousness
was addressed to Dr. D. M. Nigro, a friend and a figure in the Democratic
organization.

"Doc," he said, "what I can't understand is why anybody would do
this to me. Why to me, to Johnny Lazia, who has been the friend of
everybody?"

'Dr. Nigro hurried to the telephone with a message to Pendergast that
was heard by a Star reporter.

"He is very low, Boss," the physician said. "He has spoken of you, Mr.
Pendergast, and says he loves you as always.**

Sevea thousand persons stood in line to attend the wake for Johnny
Lazia. Thousands overflowed the grounds of his sister's modest home and
rode in the funeral procession. T. J. Pendergast, Judge McElroy, Police

THE HEART OF AMERICA 263

Director Higgins and Mike Ross were conspicuous among the prominent
citizens who rubbed shoulders with the obscure friends of Brother John.
Miss Mary McElroy rode gravely in the funeral procession. Pedestrians
and motorists stopped and gawked.

The police gave perhaps their most strenuous performance in an ef-
fort to solve the crime and apprehend the killers. Members of the Lusco
gang were rounded up and put through the showup on the theory that
the assassination had been in reprisal for the spot murder of Anthon or
marked a new stage in the rivalry between the Kansas City gangs. Lusco's
men yielded no leads and police turned to the theory that the crime was
the work of a local bandit gang which suspected that Lazia had turned
up some of its members to the police in the effort to suppress the "rough
stuff." Then they theorized that it was the work of an out-of-town gang
which could get no concessions in Kansas City. The police made no
progress.

The murder of Lazia was never officially solved but police. Federal
men and newspapermen pieced together bits of information and under-
world gossip to form the legend that four men carried out the assassina-
tion and that Lazia had drawn their wrath by obstructing their racket
operations in Kansas City. All four disappeared and at least three of
them are not expected to be seen again. If it is true, as some authorities
believe, that they were overtaken by gang vengeance, the hand of under-
world justice had an unusually wide spread. One of the alleged assassins
was Michael James LaCapra, alias Jimmy Needles, who gave the infor-
mation that involved Lazia in the Union Station massacre negbtiations.
His body was found in August, 1935? near Platekill, Long Island, where
it had been dumped in typical gang fashion. Another one of the four
came to the attention of the Kansas City police when he was wounded in
a gun battle on a downtown street and later found refuge in the General
Hospital. Before the investigation in his case had proceeded far, he was
spirited away from his hospital bed by an individual dressed as a police
officer and the last heard of him is the rumor that he was turned over to
two men who took him for a ride. Details concerning the third man are
less complete. He simply vanished. It appears that the fourth man got
away and he may still be living in a West Coast city. On the way west,
he was credited with shooting his way out of an ambush in Colorado,

264 TOM'S TOWN

killing a Kansas City gangster in a party that was trying to capture him.
There have been no further developments since that gunman's body
was found.

While the story of Johnny Lazia trailed off in whispers of sudden
death, his followers rallied under a new leader. Long before the whispers
died it was clear that the North Side organization was still a power in
Kansas City.

Old Missouri

THE MAN FROM INDEPENDENCE

HARRY S. TRUMAN is accustomed to having political offices he didn't
seek thrust upon him, and Tom Pendergast has been given perhaps more
credit than he deserves for bringing up a future President of the United
States. Mr. Truman was Uncle Tom's second or third choice for the job
of United States senator in 1934, and he wore the boss collar more lightly
than any important figure ever identified with the machine. The collar
didn't chafe very often for the two good reasons that the Independence
man had a strong mind of his own together with a highly developed sense
of party regularity, and Tom Pendergast was able to see and appreciate
the rare quality of this combination. The result was that Truman made
liis faithfulness to Pendergast a political legend and the Boss exercised his
control in such a way that Truman was able to say in 1939, after the Pen-
dergast crash: "Tom Pendergast never asked me to do a dishonest deed.
He knew I wouldn't do it if he asked it. He was always my friend. He
was always honest with me, and when he made a promise he kept it."

It is possible that Pendergast was thinking of Truman when he made
his statement in the 1933 contention over the gambling issue, explaining
the nature of his organization, which, like the world, contained both the
good and bad of -life "among them are the best and others who take
advantage."

For twelve years Truman had been performing important services
for his party with a modesty that made him almost self-effacing among;
politicians. In fact he was so slow about pushing himself forward for
special consideration that Uncle Tom took rather more rime than he
should have, in recognizing Truman's particular merits.

265

266 TOM'S TOWN

The Pendergasts needed Harry Truman quite as much as he needed a
job when in 1922 they supported him for his first elective office judge
of the County Court from the Eastern District of Jackson County. He
was picked for that place not by Boss Tom but by Jimmy Pendergast,
nephew of old Alderman Jim, and the indorsement was given by Mike
Pendergast, father of Jimmy and Tom's older brother, who had charge
of Goat affairs in the county precincts outside Kansas City.

Their political association grew out of the soldiers* friendship of Jim
Pendergast and Harry Truman when they were fellow officers in the
First World War. With the customary Goat foresight, Mike Pendergast
sized up the future candidate from Independence when he visited his son
in Camp Doniphan when the Jackson County men were training in an
Officer's School. He heard more favorable reports on Truman when the
Jackson Countians went overseas with the Thirty-fifth Division, in which
Truman served as commanding officer of Battery D of the One Hundred
and Twenty-ninth Field Artillery. Jim was a lieutenant under Truman
before he became captain of Battery A of the One Hundred and Thirtieth,
which fought along side the One Hundred and Twenty-ninth. When the
boys came home, one of the men who figured oftenest in their stories
was Captain Harry of Battery D, the Baptist farmer from the Grand-
view neighborhood who established a complete fellowship with a rugged
outfit of Kansas City Irishmen on the muddy roads of the Vosges, St.
Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne.

In the first years after the war, Harry Truman was not forgotten by
the Pendergasts while he turned to business enterprise with his Jewish
friend and war buddy, Eddie Jacobson, in a haberdashery store on
Twelfth Street. Truman, spruce, smiling and efficient, made fyis store a
headquarters for his old comrades of Battery D, many of them Legion
members who were beginning to take an important interest in political
affairs. The store failed after two years, a casualty of the depression of
1921, leaving Truman with a debt of about twenty thousand dollars
which he refused to dodge through bankruptcy proceedings and finally
paid off many years later.

Captain Harry went back to Independence to consider what to do
with his future.

Boss Pendergast looked him over and quickly approved the selection

OLD MISSOURI 267

made by Mike and son Jimmy. The Pendergast family friendship was not
the only large factor in this decision, since a strong movement for Tru-
man had developed in Legion circles in Independence. So the Boss was
impressed at the outset that this countryman did not need to feel that he
owed his whole existence to the head of the organization. Even if he
had been minded to instruct the fledgling candidate in his dudes to the
Chief, Uncle Tom was in no strong position to do much dictating to
Truman in 1922. The Ku Klux Klan was then riding high over Jackson
County, raising the flaming cross against the Kansas City Catholics who
dominated the native Democracy. To meet that threat in the county
precincts, stronghold of the two-hundred-per-cent Americans, the organ-
ization needed a man who was a Protestant, a high Mason and a war
veteran. Harry Truman, captain of Battery D, Baptist, Mason and a mem-
ber of a pioneer county family, met the qualifications almost to a unique
degree.

In addition to the Klan matter, the Goats at this time were having
Rabbit trouble in an acute form. Under the aggressive direction of Mike
Pendergast, the Kansas City faction was making a determined effort to
break Joe Shannon's grip on the county property outside Kansas City.
That invasion by the Goats had been complicated by the defection of
Miles Bulger, presiding judge of the County Court, to the Rabbit side.
Under these circumstances, the addition of Truman to the Goat ticket
was doubly advantageous to the Pendergasts, for it brought high into
their circle a man whose Jackson County relatives and background out-
numbered and antedated those of most of Shannon's crowd among the
Rabbits.

Truman's first race for public office was one of the closest of his career
and he was almost eliminated in the Democratic primary by his oppo-
nent, E. E. Montgomery of Blue Springs. His rival challenged the
'unofficial count, asserting he had won by forty or fifty votes, but the
official count gave Truman a margin of 282, Despite his slight plurality,
Truman was credited with having shown exceptional vote-getting ap-
peal as his victory was won in a Rabbit stronghold. It gave the Goats
control of the County Court, as both Truman and Henry F. McElroy,
his colleague on the court from the western district of the county, were
swept into office in the November election.

268 TOM'S TOWN

The County Court, an administrative rather than a judicial body of
three members, exercised an authority over patronage that made it a
prize of the spoils system. Its record during the administration when
Truman and McElroy represented the majority stands as one of the
brighter chapters of Courthouse politics. Both of these men were new
personalities on the political scene, eager to win larger public recog-
nition and destined for larger things McElroy to become city manager
of Kansas City in 1926, Truman to go on to the United States Senate
and the White House. Their reputations were established in their two
years together on the County Court, when they reduced the deficit left
by the Bulger regime and otherwise conducted the county's business
in a fashion that won for them the most ringing indorsement ever given
up to that time by the Star to a couple of Democrats, They were put
up for renomination in 1924 and won in the primary over the bitter
opposition of the Shannon and Bulger factions. Their prospects for
re-election were bright until Shannon and Bulger decided on the bolt
which defeated the Democratic county ticket and elected a Republican
governor in the fall of 1924.

The Klan vote was also credited with being a large factor in the oppo-
sition that gave Harry Truman his first and only defeat in an election
race. Charges that Truman was once a member of the KJan were raised
by the opposition to Roosevelt and aired in the Hearst press twenty
years later when Truman was running for vice president. The Kluxers
themselves were apparently under no delusions about the position of their
Baptist neighbor who went into business with a Jew and hobnobbed
with Irish Catholics.

They approached Truman with a suggestion to join the hooded order
and Edgar Hinde, postmaster of Independence, has lately told what
happened. His story appeared in an article on Truman published in
the Star, April 20, 1945, just after Truman entered the White House.
Hinde said that in the 1922 campaign a Klan organizer came to him with
the advice that the cross-burners would support Truman for county
judge if he joined up with them.

"I put it up to Truman and he gave me ten dollars for an entrance fee
cash/* Hinde explained. "I took it down and then the organizer asked
for a conference in the Hotel Baltimore in Kansas City. There he met

OLD MISSOURI 269

Harry and said: 'You've got to promise us you won't give a Catholic a
job if you belong to us and we support you.'

" 1 won't agree to anything like that/ Harry said. 'I had a Catholic
battery in the war and if any of those boys need help I'm going to give
them a job.'"

"The organizer said, 'We can't take you, then/ and he gave back the
ten dollars, and that was the end of that."

So Truman saved ten bucks and was out of a job at the end of 1924. He
filled in the time working as an organizer for the Kansas City Auto-
mobile Club, widening his acquaintanceships, building fences and ac-
quiring useful information on road-building which he put to good
account two years later. In 1926, Truman wanted to run for county col-
lector, an office that paid about twenty thousand dollars a year, includ-
ing salary and fees. Uncle Tom had an older and needier Goat in
mind for that rich spot. He suggested that Truman run for presiding
judge of the Court, which carried a fixed salary of less than six thousand
dollars a year. Truman readily gave up the hope for wealth, and by so
doing started up the road that led to the White House. He might have
been the most efficient collector in the county's history, but it is highly
unlikely that he would then have acquired the reputation and influence
he did as presiding judge.

In the eight years while he was the head man in the Courthouse
years when the Pendergast organization's principal attention was con-
centrated on affairs in the City Hall Truman had both opportunity and
freedom to do the things that established the foundations for his rise to
the Senate and the Presidency. The county highway and building pro-
gram gave him the chance to make a showing as a planner and builder,
and he made the most of it. He was favored by circumstances of the time
in meeting a minimum of political interference. In 1929, Mike Pender-
gast died, depriving the Kansas City House of its old supervisor of county
affairs, and Uncle Tom was preoccupied with city, state and national
affairs. By this time Judge Truman was well established in his own right
as the county man with the largest prestige and following in the organiza-
tion. He had initiated the ambitious improvement program that he was
administering, and had impressed the politicians with his forcef ulness*
The Boss was showing respect for both Truman's personal integrity and

270 TOM'S TOWN

his considerable political influence when he let the efficient presiding
judge have his own way.

The patronage system on jobs continued to operate in the Courthouse
during the Truman administration. It was impossible to eliminate po-
litical favoritism entirely, but the record in public services, letting of con-
tracts and delivering the goods has stood up under the closest kind of
partisan scrutiny.

There was talk of Truman for Congress and Truman for governor and
the presiding judge's ambition first turned toward Congress. His hopes
in that direction were raised when the Legislature finally, in 1933,
adopted the redistricting based on the 1930 census, dividing Jackson
County into two districts, the Fourth and Fifth. Truman's prospects for
nomination and election as congressman from the Fourth district were
bright until Pendergast decided the place should go to C. Jasper Bell,
who had earned the organization's approval with his work as city coun-
cilman and Circuit judge. Truman hid his disappointment, which was
not prolonged. One day not long afterward he received a telephone call
that left him dizzy, for it conveyed the word that Tom Pendergast re-
quested him to file his candidacy for the Senate, and not to waste any
time about it. He didn't delay.

Harry Truman had just turned fifty when he reached this surprising
and fateful turn in his life. The decision for Mm hadn't been made by
Uncle Tom alone. Jimmy Pendergast went to his uncle in behalf of
Truman's candidacy and another large voice in the matter was that of
James P. Aylward, chairman of the Democratic County Committee for
nearly two decades and the Democratic state chairman in 1934. Famed
as a political strategist and a "maker of men" in public life, Aylward
acquired wide influence through his ability to work with leaders of both
factions of the Kansas City Democracy.

One large factor in the selection of Truman wds the renewal of boss
rivalry over the senatorship. Pendergast was still smarting from the re-
versal suffered in the Senate race in 1932, when Bennett C. Clark of
Bowling Green downed Tom's man, Howell. He was impressed then
with the public's sensitiveness to the machine tag on a senatorial candi-
date, and reluctant to stir up that issue again. Ordinarily a senatorship
was considered largely a prestige affair in boss politics, hardly worth a

OLD MISSOURI 271

major fight on the machine's part. That was true in an earlier day, when
Federal patronage and influence didn't cut much cake in local affairs,
but both Federal power and machine politics had expanded greatly in
recent years.

The Kansas City politicians saw that Senator Bennett Clark had begun
to build himself up as a Missouri boss with his election in 1932. They be-
came alarmed at the size of his challenge in 1934, when he backed one
of his followers for the second senatorship from Missouri. They felt that
if he controlled both posts, then Bennett Clark, and not Tom Pendergast,
would be the first Missouri boss.

Actually, the congressional offices always had been more important to a
local boss than was commonly supposed. One of the things that made
businessmen tolerant of machine politics was the ability of bosses to pick
congressmen and senators who appreciated the special interests of busi-
ness. With the growth of the Federal system through the bureaucracy
and the courts, the congressional offices assumed much more importance
in the machine. The boys in the precincts might still consider a justice of
the peace, a collector's office or a city clerk of more consequence than a
congressman, but the boss could no longer view the representative so
lightly. And the whole local organization began to look upon the national
offices with more respect in the ip3o's. The vast Federal government
spending program for relief and recovery made influence in Washington
a matter of unprecedented concern to the home boys. One of the large
items involved in this operation was the office of state director of the
WPA, which handled the spending of millions over a period of about
five years. This office went to a Pendergast lieutenant, Matt Murray, a
year after the Kansas City organization sent Truman to the Senate to
challenge the Bennett Clark threat to Goat patronage influence in Wash-
ington.

The call to make the Senate race against Clark's man went to Harry
Truman because, first, James P. Aylward declined Pendergast's invitation
to run and recommended Truman instead. There was a report that Pen-
dergast then tried to interest Joe Shannon, the Rabbit leader, in making
the Senate race but Shannon eliminated himself because of his age and
failing health. It is difficult to believe that Pendergast dallied over in-
dofcement of Truman after his attention was called to die situation

272 TOM'S TOWN

created by the raiding of Bennett Clark, for Truman was the logical
candidate in every way. In addition to his admirable qualifications as a
Missouri farmer, a war veteran, a Legionnaire, a Mason, a Baptist and a
successful county judge, there were two special points that recommended
Truman for consideration in 1934; he had established the best record for
independence of any office-seeker in the boss organization, and he identi-
fied himself as a strong Roosevelt supporter. Speaking a very different
language from Senator Reed and some other prominent Kansas City
Democrats, Truman praised Roosevelt fulsomely, accepted the whole
New Deal program and exhibited a pronounced cordiality toward organ-
jzed labor. As state director of Federal re-employment in 1934, he had
actual contact with some New Dealers and picked up bits of their lan-
guage. In his opening campaign speech at Columbia, Missouri, before an
audience of farmers and small-town tradesmen, Truman boldly acclaimed
the Brain Trusters, and declared the Constitution allowed for much more
radical measures than any that were undertaken under the program of
that "great economist and leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Whether or not he was deliberately selected for that purpose, Harry
Truman was Uncle Tom's emissary for a reconciliation between Kansas
City and Washington. After Truman's nomination, indication that
Roosevelt had been favorably impressed by his new adherent from Jack-
son County was given when Farley announced that the national party
leadership would extend some aid to Nominee Truman. Farley would
not say whether this also meant that Roosevelt looked with more favor
oo Pendcrgast. For his part, the Kansas City boss would not speak out in
praise of .Roosevelt, an attitude he maintained to the end. He was too
proud to court thus openly the favor of the President whom he had con-
spicuously opposed and privately criticized. In a discussion of his cold-
ness toward the New Deal reformer, he once explained that he regarded
William J Bryan as the only "sincere reformer." Uncle Tom had lost
his interest in reform long before FJD JR. appeared and he couldn't revive
it for expediency's sake because, as he described himself, he was "no per-
sonal opportunist." His Democratic idealism was summed up in the
phrase, "You can't beat five billion dollars/* a comment on New Deal
appropriations for relief purposes.

Noac tbe less, despite die Boss's firm stand on his aatircfarm pria-

OLD MISSOURI 273

ciplcs, the Truman nomination was managed throughout in a way to
suggest that this was an effort to convince Mr. Roosevelt and his friends
that the Kansas City Democrats were good New Dealers. In the process,
the Kansas City organization gave a sharp rebuff to former Senator Jim
Reed, who had returned to the attack on Roosevelt and was laying the
basis for the Anti-Roosevelt Jeffersonian crusade which Reed and a few
other Democratic has-beens promoted in 1936.

While Truman gave serious attention to the business of showing that
he shared none of the Reed sentiments on Roosevelt, he dealt lightly and
pleasantly with the machine issue. In fact, he announced that he was go-
ing to make his campaign "just a lot of fun" and he did have some sport
answering the charges that he was a boss man. His principal opponents
were Jacob L. (Tuck) Milligan of Richmond, Missouri, and John }.
Cochran of St. Louis, both of them congressmen seeking larger recogni*
tion from the voters. When they branded Truman as a creature of Uncle
Tom's, the Independence man smilingly reminded the voters how eager
and happy his opponents had been to get the Pendcrgast indorsement
two years earlier in the congressional races. Adding his own bit to the
boss picture, Truman warned the voters that Tuck Milligan was a stooge
for Senator Clark.

The fact was, of course, that all of the important candidates in all the
important races were picked or backed by groups which operated in the
manner of machines and contained men with boss ambitions* Senator
Clark, contender for the iSJo. i position in the Missouri Democracy, was
the principal supporter of Milligan. Prominent among the backers of
Cochran were Bill Igoe, St. Louis boss, and Mayor Bernard L, Dickmann,
who was inflating himself with ideas about running for governor in
1936,

Candidate Milligan invaded Pendergast's home grounds in the last
week of the campaign, accompanied by Senator Clark, and raised the
boss and ghost vote questions before a large rally in Kansas City.
Ridiculing Truman's charge that he, Milligan, was controlled by Sena-
tor Clark, Milligan said:

"When we exploded those statements, he journeyed away down to
Louisiana to find Huey P. Long and said he would control me.

**Yon in Kansas City do&'t have to travel down to Louisiana to find

274 TOM'S TOWN

the man who will control Harry Truman if he ever becomes a member
o the United States Senate. He will be controlled by the same gentle-
man who has controlled him as presiding elder of the Jackson County
Court, Why, if Harry ever goes to the Senate, he will grow calluses
on his ears listening on the long distance telephone to the orders of
his boss."

Prominent in the gathering were Democrats who figured: in the 1934
city campaign against the Pendergast organization. The crowd roared
its approval when the candidate assailed the practice o padded voting
and registration in Kansas City, declaring:

"The dishonest ballot, if continued, will destroy this government. I
believe the man who perpetrates that practice upon the people should
be treated as any other criminal. He not only violates the laws of the
state, but he also violates the Federal laws."

Watching the race was the candidate's brother, Maurice M. Milligan,
then Federal district attorney in Kansas City on an appointment recom-
mended ,by Senator Clark. Maurice Milligan directed the vote fraud
prosecutions two years later which had such a devastating effect on
tiie Kansas City organization.

Jackson County Democrats gave Truman some 137,000 votes and
allowed his three opponents together less than 11,000; the vote from
Pendergast's stronghold provided the margin for Truman's victory.
He was nominated by more than 40,000 over the second man in the
race, Cochran. The day after the primary, newspaper political writers
declared fhat the results established Pendergast as the undisputed boss
from one end of the state to the other.

\ While the experts studied the returns, Kansas City took a long second
look at the Jackson County man who was going to fill the Senate seat
whici^had been vacated by Reed in 1929. He didn't have any of Reed's
color in fact he seemed to be about as neutral as the gray suits he liked
^o wear. Despite the dudey effect of his ties and suits, he had the lean,
iajd look of a Missouri farmer, a familiar type except when he smiled,
wtiich was often, and tlien the wide grin beneath the sharp nose and the
Bright eyes flashing through his glasses gave him the air of a gay and
Irisky owh Hs couldn't orate. He was unable to strike di&matic poses
and didg't seem indioed to try. He didn't roar and beat his bjreast

OLD MISSOURI 275

he was accused of being an errand boy for the Boss. He merely smiled
and went about his business with an even tread. It didn't seem likely
that he would cut much of a figure in the Senate and be talked of for
the Presidency, as Jim Reed was.

Harry S. Truman went on to win the Senate seat easily, defeating
the Republican incumbent by approximately 265,000 votes. Pender-
gast's bid for more consideration from the Washington politicians was
Truman plus a record off-year vote from Jackson County, The experts
on presidential possibilities, surveying the new crop of 1934, passed over
Truman without pause while picking out Alf Landon of Kansas, who
looked like a new Coolidge and was elected Governor for a second term.
The experts are hardly to be blamed for failing to pay more attention to
the county judge from Independence in '34, for Mr. Truman wasn't
trying to be prophetic in that campaign when he declared: "I intend, as
a member of the Senate, to use all of my power to follow Roosevelt
to the end of the New Deal."

THE BIG MONEY

ON THE twenty-second of January, 1935, Tom Pendergast met an insur-
ance man in the privacy of a Chicago hotel room to work out final terms
in the settlement of a matter that became known as the Second Missouri
Compromise. It involved an item of nearly ten million dollars, a fund
that was built up during litigation over the fire insurance rates charged
Missouri policyholders. As everyone knows, the first Missouri Com-
promise was the arrangement under which the Show Me State entered
the Union in 1821, a complicated deal with a loophole for the extension
of slavery which led on to the War Between the States. As quite a few
people know, the second deal in 1935 enriched the Kansas City boss by
$315,000 and brought Him to disaster. However, not many persons have as
clear a picture of the second compromise as they do of the first, for the
Pendergast operation was a bit more complicated than the 1821 business.
The 1935 taeeting in Chicago opened with Charles R. Street, vice-
president of the Great American Insurance Company, offering Pender-
settlement of the Missouri irate litigation. Specifically,

276 TOM'S TOWN

what he wanted was to have the State of Missouri abandon the fight on
the proposed increase^ in insurance rates and break up the large pot of
disputed premiums that had been collected during the controversy. The
issue had started in 1929, under a Republican state administration, when
the companies served notice on the then state superintendent of insur-
ance that their rates were being upped sixteen and two-thirds per cent.
When the policyholders and the superintendent protested against this
large hike the companies went to court to enjoin state interference with
the new rates. Pending final decision of the courts the sixteen and two-
thirds excess in premiums was impounded and by 1935 this fund
amounted to* more than nine million dollars. In addition to this prize in
the Federal Court, there was a smaller fund of nearly two million dollars
impounded in action in the state courts.

Mr. Pendergast was not interested at all in this kind of small change,
so Street raised the ante to $500,000 and the Kansas City boss accepted.
However, he was slow in getting action started and the Street offer was
hiked to $750,000 in the interests of speed when the Chicago insurance
executive and the Missouri politician met again in a Chicago hotel, March
28, 1935.

Action was obtained through R. Emmet O'Malley, Pendergast's long-
time personal friend and associate in insurance enterprise, who was ap-
pointed state superintendent of insurance in 1933 by Governor Park. He
was the one who brought Pendergast and Street together through ar-
rangements with A. L. McCormack, St. Louis insurance man, then presi-
dent of the Missouri Insurance Agents* Association.

Pendergast and O'Malley began to deliver on their part of the bargain
immediately after McCormack delivered the first installment of the
$750,000 on May 9, 1935. McCormack arrived in a plane from Chicago
with $50,000 in cash in a bag, went directly to the Jackson Democratic
Club at 1908 Main Street and turned the loot over to Pendergast, who
put the money in his safe. Six days later the insurance compromise was
put in writing at a conference in the Hotel Muehlebach, attended by
O'Malley, McCormack, Street, officials and attorneys of the fire insurance
companies. The instrument was signed only after O'Malley personally
took a copy of the agreement to 1908 Main Street for Big Tom's final
approval.

OLD MISSOURI 277

The second installment was then due and McCormack returned to
Chicago, went direct to Street's office, picked up $50,000 and delivered it
to 1908 Main Street, Kansas City. Pendergast this time kept only $5,000,
directed McCormack to deliver $22,500 to O'Malley and keep $22,500
himself, which he did.

The next payment was not made until after the Federal Court in
Kansas City, three judges sitting, February i, 1936, entered an order to
distribute the impounded premiums according to the compromise agree-
ment. Eighty per cent of this fund went to the companies, twenty per
cent to the policyholders. The costs, which were large, came from the
companies* share and included an unexplained item of five per cent to
cover the fix. The original $100,500 bribe money had been assembled by
Street from checks made out to him by fourteen companies in the
Missouri litigation, and he converted these checks into the currency that
was turned over to McCormack. After the court approved the compro-
mise, Street directed each company to issue checks to him totaling $330,-
ooo, which he converted into currency that was handed to McCormack in
Streets office for delivery to Pendergast. McCormack put the fortune in
a Gladstone bag, boarded the Santa Fe Chief for Kansas City, April i,
1936, arrived in Kansas City at eight forty-five o'clock that night and
went to Pendergast's home at 5650 Ward Parkway, The Boss counted the
crisp bills, kept $250,000 and handed $80,000 back to McCormack with
the order that he turn over $40,000 to O'Malley and keep $40,000 for him-
self, which he did.

By this time $430,000 of the agreed price had been delivered, $305,000
to Pendergast and $125,000 divided equally between O'Malley and Mc-
Cormack. One further payment, a small one, was made later to Pender-
gast. Some $300,000 of the agreed price was never delivered.

It was all very slick and high toned. The insurance executives simply
made out a check to their trustee for some necessary expenses, and what
lie did with it was his business. They didn't have to know that the Kansas
City boss and aa official of the State of Missouri were paid off, they re-
covered about five million dollars for their companies and the policy-
holders got a little something. No one had to worry much except the
f o^r principals in the pay-off and their number included a protector who
appeared to be invulnerable.

278 TOM'S TOWN

%

Tom Pendergast was not, however, a man at peace. Perhaps he wasn't
worried about the well-hidden insurance deal, but he was deeply troubled
about something, in fact several things. A reporter who saw him in this
period between the campaigns of '34 and '36 was startled by the change
in him. He was heavier and grayer, and his eyes carried a sick look. ,
His two hundred and forty pounds made him look shorter than the five
feet nine that he measured. When he sat at his desk at 1908 Main Street,
giving orders and answering questions, he was still the powerful Boss
whose eyes and voice intimidated all others in the room, but the marks
of age were painfully visible on him, and within him was a great tension.

Uncle Tom was actually a much sicker man than anyone guessed at
the time. In addition to his old intestinal ailment, to the fat, high blood
pressure and nervous strain, he was suffering from an acute attack of
gambling fever. The destructive force of this last malady was not widely
appreciated until several years later, when the government presented
some interesting data on the gambling mania together with its detailed
account of the insurance bribe and Pendergast's fantastic income tax
dodges. The gambling fever reached its highest point in the man most
responsible for the rise of the gambling traffic and he became the classic
illustration of the development of an ancient social pastime into a major
vice. In a community of suckers, he was The Sucker. Some of his friends
estimated that he gambled away six million dollars in the last decade of
his big play, and the government evidence indicated that in 1935 he ac-
tually wagered two million dollars on the horse races and lost six hundred
thousand dollars. It was believed that his losses were one of the chief
things that decided him to arrange the insurance compromise in that
same year. His fascination in the turf game interfered more and more
with his business and political affairs. It made him shut himself away
from callers in the afternoons while he sat in a room with headphone
clamped to this ears following the reports of the ponies. A bet of five
thousand dollars on a race was common with him.

As with everything else, Pendergast was very clever about hiding his
fever and his losses. He had to Jiide them from some of his associates,
from his wife and children, and from Uncle Sam. He handled every r
thing in cash, and worked out an elaborate system of dummies andJS^r
titious names to cover up the sources of income and 0i#go*jkit operation

OLD MISSOURI 279

of this size could not be kept entirely secret, and talk about the fabulous
Sucker in Kansas City spread over the town, the state and the country.
And with the gamblers' gossip, beginning some time early in 1936, went
the whisper of a big pay-off in insurance.

The bribe whisper followed Torn Pendergast to Saratoga, to New
York, to London and back, to Philadelphia and home to Missouri. It
grew very loud in the campaign that immediately followed the Second
Missouri Compromise and opened the final assault on the Boss. That last
engagement was a protracted affair, however, a series of battles rather
than one big smash. Tom Pendergast, cornered, sick and a doomed man,
was still a giant in the political arena. His $305,000 from the insurance
bribers was soon gone down the same drain with his other bets and the
Federal investigation that was to expose every step in this carefully con-
cealed transaction began in the same month that he received the $250,000
installment from Agent McCormack. Events thereafter moved with a
rush and Pendergast's rally for the concluding rounds started in the
shadow of death.

UNCLE TOM'S HEART

THE BRIBE rumors got thoroughly mixed up with ghost talk in the August
and November campaigns of 1936. This whispering company made a
disturbance that reached to y Washington and reverberated through elec-
tion contests and court fights for the next four years. The new addition
to this spfectral chorus, the ghost votes, was approximately as active and
destructive as the pay-off spooks. Between them, the insurance bribe and
election fraud scandals of '36 eventually rounded out the Pendergast
cycle. Although they figured sensationally in the '36 campaigns, they did
not have their grand climax until somewhat later. Meanwhile, the po-
litical show out front was dominated by a third factor which probably
had as much to do as any one thing with the Pendergast debacle.

This third phenomenon was the entry into the 1936 campaign of the
apple man from Louisiana, Missouri, Lloyd Stark, developer of Stark's
DeliciouSj who came forward with Big Tom's blessing and shortly there-
after turned into the Jack the Giant Killer of the reform. Stark won the
Pemocratic nominatioa for governor with Pendergast delivering another

28o TOM'S TOWN

record vote from Jackson County and went on to win the final election
with the Democratic ballots in Pendergast's county establishing an all-
time high.

This Mr. Stark was strictly an apple knocker despite the fact that
he gave a deceptive opening number as an apple polisher. He had first
solicited Pendergast's support for his gubernatorial ambition in 1932 and
received a cold reception. He came back in 1936 and got what he wanted.
This tSme he was loaded with indorsements, testimonials and pledges o
support from Democratic politicians in the state before he called at
1908 Main Street, and it was plain that Mr. Pendergast had to take the
Louisiana nurseryman if he desired to avoid a fight against a formidable
antagonist. He decided to win the apple man's gratitude.

Stark did not respond naturally to the old 1908 Main treatment. A
severe, humorless man with the eyes of a zealot and the mouth of a
Puritan, he gave all of the Kansas City boys a chill and they quickly
abandoned hope of warming him up. A man with a jaw as ugly as Big
Tom% and something of an eccentric on physical culture, Stark didn't
seem to know when he was being intimidated. A former Navy officer
and a former Army officer as well, he knew a thing or two himself
about the strategy of infiltration and surprise, insinuating himself into
the good graces of the St. Louis Democratic machine at the same time
he was working the old hocus-pocus on the Kansas City machine. And
he was an ingrate. He showed no appreciation at all when the Goats
produced the damnedest biggest primary vote ever counted in Jackson
County to win the nomination for Stark. He wasn't impressed when
Tom followed that with the all-time number in the November election
a vote total which suggested that Kansas City had a population two
hundred thousand greater than was allowed by the Federal census, and
one which could be interpreted as a profound tribute from the House of
Pendergast to the new governor, or a warning to him of the political
might of his backer, or both. ,

In explaining Pendergast's mistake in accepting Stark for governor, it
shpuld be noted that the Boss was not his usual self. The deterioration in
his health had accelerated in recent months and in June of 1936 his
condition became desperate. He hit a big bumpjshortly after he re-
turned from Europe on the Queen Mary, June 2* His homecoming was

OLD MISSOURI 281

noted by Treasury agents ahd one link that connected him with the
Missouri insurance bribe was closed.

He had returned in time for the Democratic National Convention,
which was held in June, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pendergast took a suite on
the twenty-ninth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, and received
Missouri politicians and national party figures there while waiting for
the convention to open, June 23. He commuted from New York to
Philadelphia the first day of the Convention and returned to his hotel in
the evening. During the day he ate something or heard something that
violently disagreed with him and that night he suffered a digestive upset,
which was eased when he took a bicarbonate of soda. The next day he
was desperately ill. New York physicians were hurriedly summoned and
it was found that the Kansas City boss was suffering* from coronary
thrombosis. For a time his recovery was doubtful.

The doctors ordered complete rest and quiet, a period of perhaps six
months without excitement of any kind. The New York doctor attend-
ing him shook his head gravely, then added hopefully: "Although Mr.
Pendergast is a stronger to me, I can see that he is a man of great energy
and forcefulness, physically and mentally."

That spirit which the physician observed produced a rally in the Boss,
and after the first scare was past he began to take a hand in the Missouri
battle that was raging in his absence.

"I guess the people at home are saying I have stayed back here to dodge
a fight," he remarked to a Star reporter who interviewed him in the New
York hotel in August, shortly before the primary election. He still looked
like a very sick man, he had lost thirty-five pounds during his illness, the
flesh hung loosely on his bulldog jaws and his whole body sagged, but
the voice and the eyes told that he wasn't licked. He defied the doctor's
orders to rest and prepared final instructions for his followers in Kansas
City which he sent in care of his son, Tom, Jr., who returned by plane
on the eve of the primary election.

Although Lloyd Stark had not yet come out inter the open with his
opposition to Pendergast, the emergent insurance scandal created a large
agitation in the primary campaign. Stark's opponent for the" guber-
natorial nomination, William Hirth, veteran head of the Missouri Farm-
ers* Association, made Pendergastism and insurance his principal issues.

282 TOM'S TOWN

He denounced O'Malley's disposition of the millions of impounded
insurance funds, describing it as "the buzzards* feast which the machine
lawyers are obtaining from these funds." He also raised a great hue and
cry about an item of five million which O'Malley wanted the state to
collect from fraternal insurance companies, saying this represented back
taxes and interest due. The fraternals replied that O'Malley's action was
harassment designed to drive them out of business in Missouri in favor
of private companies, and also served to make more fat fees through
more litigation.

The attack on Pendergast opened from another quarter when Uncle
Joe Shannon took advantage of Uncle Tom's absence and weakness to
support a St. Louis Democrat for a place on the state Supreme Court
against the candidate favored by Pendergast. Fight for control of the
Court mounted in intensity as the litigation over insurance and other
matters approached a showdown, and the Shannon defection from the
Boss in this instance was a curtain raiser to the great struggle over the
court in which Governor Stark played a leading role two years later.

Uncle Joe, like Uncle Tom, was a sick man at this time, but the primary
contest over the Supreme Court judgeship had a galvanizing effect on
him, and he ended the campaign feeling better than he had for years.
That is, he felt fine until the votes were counted. The first to cry fraud
was not the Star or District Attorney Milligan but Congressman Shan-
non, whose candidate for Supreme Court judge was downed by a better
than two to one count. It seemed that the heated campaign oratory had
brought out the election ghosts in a parade of unprecedented propor-
tions.

Uncle Joe was not complaining on the basis of hearsay evidence. On
primary day he circulated among the voting booths of the Twelfth Ward
and observed the ghosts and their assistants operating in various startling
ways. Among other things, he saw two of his women workers slugged
by roughnecks for protesting against illegal counting and stuffing. He
collected data on numerous other instances in which Rabbit election
judges were intimidated or ejected from the premises for protesting the
tallying of nonexistent voters. His eyewitness accounts were supported
by Mitchel Henderson, judge of the Probate Court, and Sheriff Tom
Bash, two other Rabbit leaders.

OLD MISSOURI 283

This election was "so corrupt it was a disgrace to American civiliza-
tion," said Mr. Shannon. "The Democratic Party cannot exist with this
sort of outrage," said Judge .Henderson. "I wonder how much of this
Kansas City can stand," said Sheriff Bash. The Star echoed the charges
in a page one editorial entitled "Shame."

For one day it appeared that an important rift in the Kansas City
Democratic machine had been made. Jimmy Pendergast and other
Goats expressed their contempt for the crybaby tactics of the losing
Rabbits. Governor Park pooh-poohed the fraud reports. Then there was
some scurrying and whispering behind the scenes, Congressman Shan-
non came out with a statement praising Uncle Tom's governor and the
election board chairman, and a ghostlike silence fell over the Jackson
County front.

Lloyd Stark, the new nominee for governor with the Pendergast label,
was certain of election in the fall. He had been very restrained up to this
point, saying nothing to alarm the machine boys outside of promising to
give the fraternals a "fair deal," but he hadn't missed a thing.

A week after the primary election, Tom Pendergast in New York
suffered a relapse and his children were called hurriedly from Kansas
City to be at the bedside. He rallied again and it was found the latest
disturbance was centered in the stomach rather than the heart. The
shock of the first heart attack, combined with the excitement of the cam-
paign and the tension under which the Boss was laboring, caused a recur-
rence of Pendergast's old intestinal disorder. Late in August he was
rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in New York for an emergency operation
to remove an intestinal obstruction, and the family had another bad day.
While Pendergast was fighting for his life, his younger daughter, six-
teen-year-old Aileen Margaret, was under observation in the hospital for
appendicitis.

The Goat leader rallied again and by mid-September his doctors an-
nounced it would be safe to move him to Kansas City, where he was to
be taken to a hospital for another operation. He returned to his home
town in a special car. Great secrecy covered the movement but his train
was observed when it stopped at night at the state capital, Jefferson
City, where oae passenger boarded the Pendergast speciaL He was recog-

284 TOM'S TOWN

nized as Emmet O'Malley, the Boss's faithful friend and partner in the
insurance bribe.

O'Malley was ordered by Pendergast to collect more on the pay-oft
as he needed money for hospital and doctor bills. The insurance super-
intendent passed the word on to Agent McCormack, who obtained ten
thousand dollars from Street and delivered it to Pendergast in his hos-
pital bed one morning late in October. It was the last payment on the
bribe account and the total was $310,000 below the agreed price. It was a
bad deal all around and worse was to follow soon, but by this time Uncle
Tom had demonstrated that he could take it and that there was enormous
vigor still left in his wrecked body.

GHOSTS

WHEN Tom Pendergast came home in the fall of 1936 the fireworks for
the final election in November were already popping. Opening the last
round, the Star set off one of the heaviest barrages it had ever directed
against the machine, and the ghosts were the newspaper's particular
target. A ghost was a name fraudulently registered and voted.

Since the August primary, the editors had been preparing the attack.
The Star instigated its own investigation of registration frauds, assigning
two of its ablest reporters Charles W. Graham and Paul V. Miner to
the work. They developed an efficient spy and tipster system and took full
advantage of political rivalries and treacheries to get the material they
wanted. It was a dangerous assignment, for the newspapermen risked
manhandling from hoodlums and rough interference from police. How-
ever, throughout most of the investigation, they had the benefit of heayy
protection that was said to have been ordered by the Boss himself after
a couple of Democratic partisans had made threatening gestures at the
reporters. A serious incident obviously would have added fuel to the
Star's campaign.

The Star's disclosures were published in a series o stories that appeared
in the last two weeks before the election. The newspaper published the
photograph of one ghost who was a stranger to the wife of the man
whose name he had assumed for registration purposes. A circuit judge

5. /. Ray in The Kansas City Star

Out-Ghosting the Ghosts

The ghost vote scandals of 1936 were recalled by tactics used to prevent a Recall
election in 1939.

286 TOM'S TOWN

was embarrassed when reporters produced evidence that two individuals
whose petitions for registration he had upheld were ghosts. The reporters
found from two to eight ghosts in the homes of many city and county
employees. Some of these jobholders were not aware that the goblins
had moved in on them. An interesting point in the investigation was the
finding that quite a few of the government employees risked the wrath
of the fraudulent registration operators by refusing to accommodate the
ghosts in their homes. The reporters encountered the highest proportion
of horiesty and fearlessness in the poorer homes, whose position should
have made them the easiest victims of corruption and intimidation. The
higher the investigation went, the more indifference and resistance it met.
. The expos agitated the Goat leadership to the extent that it had the
Election Board order a canvass of the registration. The Star declared
that this was a gesture designed to head off the demand for a real canvass
of the vote lists. A few thousand names were dropped from the registra-
tion books by the machine-controlled Election Board and the ghosts
found other ways to get on the list. The newspaper's crusade was not an
unqualified success. It succeeded in eliminating only a fraction of the
illegal registration. But it was extremely useful in focusing attention on
the corruption of the ballot, building up the case for the greater action
that was to follow soon from the Federal government quarter.
Two days before the general election of 1936 the Star summed up the
results of its investigation with the declaration, "An honest election here
'Tuesday is absolutely impossible." That statement was based on infor-
mation showing that in "numerous precincts and probably one entire
ward, ghosts outnumber the legitimate voters.'*

The Democratic victory was so complete that no one had the wind to
raise the usual cry of robbery and fraud the morning after. For the next
five weeks the public was allowed to forget the whole thing. So pro-
found a silence was unnatural and, as it turned out, significant. However,
the people needed this time in which to muster all of their strength for
the shock o the romance of the ages, the Edward-Wally affair, which "at
long last 1 * reached its denouement December 10, 1936, with the abdica-
tion of Edward VIII. The Kansas City gamblers exhibited their senti-
ment and usual acumen by betting that the American Woman would
win over Prime Minister Baldwin and the British Cabinet. For one beau-

OLD MISSOURI 287

tiful half-hour near the close of 1936, the Playboy King and the Baltimore
Divorcee restored Twelfth Street's faith in humanity.

District Attorney Milligan waited four days for the abdication excite-
ment to subside before he opened his well-prepared case against the
election ghosts. Then Judge Albert L. Reeves in Federal court instructed
a new grand jury to go into the vote frauds in all sixteen wards.

"When a man casts a dishonest ballot, he cocks and fires a gun at the
heart of America," the Judge told jurors and spectators, in a courtroom
charged with tension.

"Gentlemen, reach forall, even if you find them in high authority.
Move on them!"

The special nature of this investigation was suggested by the range o
the instructions, the Court's choice of rhetoric and the presence in town
of numerous mysterious individuals who turned out to be F.B.I. agents,
sent by Washington to make this the greatest hunt for election crooks in
American history.

Thirty indictments were returned in the first report of that jury, but
that was only a modest beginning. The last election fraud case was not
disposed of in the courts until two years later and the succession of jury
reports marked stages in the machine's plunge to ruin.

BALLOTS, JUDGES AND MEN*

THERE WERE between fifty and sixty thousand illegal votes from Kansas
City in the election of November, 1936, a conservative estimate based
on the disclosures in the election fraud investigations and the sharp
decline in registration that followed the Federal prosecutions and elec-
tion law reform. Registration dropped from nearly 270,000 in the land-
slide year of 1936 to 216,033 for the city campaign in the spring of 1938,
the first election held after a new permanent registration law had been
enacted and put in force under direction of the Election Board ap-
pointed by Governor Stark in 1937.

Kansas Citians haH been accustomed to hearing of election thieves for
fifty years without getting a good look at them until the long parade of
vote fraud defendants was staged in the Federal courts in 1937 and 1938.

288 TOM'S TOWN

They were then startled and disturbed by the appearance of this piratical
crew, not because they were more grotesque than they had been pic-
tured in the lurid imaginations of newspaper cartoonists, but because they
looked so much like ordinary citizens, which for the most part they were.
The underworld types among them were greatly outnumbered by
citizens who never before had been in trouble with the law.

Besides the surprising character of the election crooks, there was one
other element in the ghost vote that puzzled many people, and that was
the fact that this greatest of election frauds occurred in a contest that was
not even a close race in the beginning. The machine hadn't needed all or
any of those fraudulent votes to win. Why had the organization ordered
them produced, or permitted them to be tallied ? This phenomenon was
noted by Arthur Krock, Washington correspondent of the New Yorf^
Times, who made a study of the Kansas City situation several months
after the trials started.

"The frauds revealed and expected to be revealed had nothing to do
with the result of any contest for offices in Kansas City last November,'*
he wrote. "There the Democratic majorities are naturally large, and the
popularity of the New Deal plus the efficiency of the machine have made
them larger. Why, then, was there stealing by 'the boys?' Any observer
of city politics knows the real answer. Each party worker of the pro-
fessional type is an office seeker. From him results are demanded in ex-
change for jobs. The better showing he makes, the higher his standing
over rival precinct, ward or district workers. This competition has led
'the boys' to be what the boss calls 'overzealous.' "

It was very easy to figure these things out if you were an old hand in
the Washington political game, but the operation appeared to be a little
more complicated if you lived in Kansas City. The Federal investigators,
the prosecutor and the judges trying the cases were impressed by the
evidence that the boys or rather the men and women who appeared
before them were directed by orders from above. On one occasion. Judge
Reeves interrupted his sentencing of a group of defendants to invite the
higher-ups to surrender themselves. He offered this suggestion with the
comment that the maximum penalty for the crime committed was only
ten years in prison and a five-thousand-dollar-fine and by accepting their
responsibility the managers of the ghosts would "rid literally hundreds

OLD MISSOURI 289

of poor people of being humiliated and punished for doing their bid-
ding."

The Judge wasn't trying to be funny.

"There should be some gallantry and chivalry," he added, "but so long
as the higher-ups remain in the background, the only thing for the judge
to do is impose sentence on those who have followed their orders."

The frauds were so extensive, so varied in nature and so marvelously
thought out that it is impossible to believe they were not part of a con-
certed and well-rehearsed plan. Besides giving little indication that the
boys were out of control, the ghosts served more of a political purpose
in 1936 than was commonly supposed. They weren't needed to win an
election, but they were useful in increasing the Boss's reputation as the
premier vote producer in Missouri, helping him to overwhelm the op-
position within his own party, to override and intimidate factional oppo-
sition outstate and to keep his prestige soaring.

Anyone who believed that the organization command was not re-
sponsible for the wild ride of the ghosts must have been touched by the
way the higher-ups went to the defense of the wretched citizens caught
in the Federal roundup. The machine gave one of its most impressive
demonstrations of "caring for its own people" in this emergency, pro-
viding money for bail, legal staff and other purposes, in fact doing every-
thing that was possible except following Judge Reeves's suggestion to
surrender the men behind the scenes. *

The grand rally did the defendants no good in court for they were up
against an efficient prosecutor, two uncommonly energetic judges and
an outfit of G-men conducting a kind of investigation that was entirely
new to the politicians in these parts, and all representing the full power
of the Federal government, applied with unrelenting pressure from
Washington. The jurors as well as the investigators were protected from
local influence, for the juries were selected from panels made up pre-
dominantly of men from counties around Kansas City in the Western
Federal district of Missouri. Result: an almost complete shutout for the
defense. District Attorney Milligan didn't have a chance to catch his
breath and tally the score until almost two years after the first trial began.
Then, at the conclusion of the thirty-ninthxonspiracy case tie reported
the prosecution had involved a total of 278 defendants, 259 of whom

290 TOM'S TOWN

were convicted by pleas or trials by jury, and the remainder dis-
charged. There were thirteen jury trials at which sixty-three were con-
victed, none acquitted. Unlucky 13 appeared again in the number o
cases appealed to the higher courts but the side representing the gamblers
had slightly better fortune that time, drawing one reversal. Total fines
assessed exceeded sixty thousand dollars, and a large number of the prin-
cipal offenders, including women, went to jail or to prison for terms
ranging up to four years. There were thirty-two penitentiary and forty
jail sentences.

Federal jurisdiction in the Kansas City vote cases was established under
the Constitutional protection of the voter's rights in balloting for presi-
dential electors and congressional candidates in the general election of
1936. Investigation at first centered on registration applications, which
turned up such interesting evidence as vacant lots for addresses of
hundreds, of supposed citizens, and small houses each occupied by a
hundred and more alleged voters. In many precincts the registration
far exceeded the total population and, as one of the Federal judges re-
marked, the total registration of almost 270,000 for the city indicated
a population trf 600,000, or about 200*000 more than the 1930 census
allowed. Beginning there, the investigation broadened out to cover all
Varieties of false registration, padding, miscounting, stuffing, intimida-
tion and interference.

Main weapon for the prosecution was found in an old civil rights'
statute, sometimes called the Ku Klux statute, enacted after the Civil
War to protect citizens whose voting rights were violated by the Klan.
District Attorney Milligan and his assistants discovered this neglected
law shortly before the vote fraud investigations started. Under this old
statute, which provided heavy penalties for conspiracy to deprive voters
of their rights^of franchise, election judges and clerks who took part in
the frauds were hauled before the courts in batches.

The defense conducted both a legal and a political attack in behalf of
the erring election judges and clerks but was handicapped somewhat by
the fact that the district attorney was a Democrat and the national ad-
ministration supporting the prosecutions was Democratic. However,
the two Federal judges who called the various grand juries and presided
at the trials were distinguished Republicans, whose vigor in pushing the

OLD MISSOURI 291

investigations and passing out sentences reminded numerous Goats and
Rabbits of the judges' devotion to the party of Harding and Hoover and
moved them to cry persecution.

Chief target of this protest was Judge Reeves, who set off the whole
thing, carried the main burden and showed no signs of weariness two
years later, when he found another way to attack the Democratic ma-
chine. The Judge asserted that he received numerous threats by tele-
phone, that some unidentified messenger informed him the "trigger
men" were eager to go after him and on one occasion in this period an
effort was made to trap him with a lady in a Springfield, Missouri, hotel
room secretly wired for sound effects. The lure, he said, was a "sweet-
voiced woman" who called him on the telephone one night and asked to
see him. The Judge was, of course, too cagey to fall for a routine plot like
this. And personal abuse or intimidation efforts merely served to make
him more energetic in the cause of righteousness.-

Reeves, the flinty Christian, had distinguished himself in public life
with his work for the Lord and the Republican faith. His Honor's dander
had been stirred to a high point over election frauds long before the ghost
scandal of 1936. Nearly twenty years earlier, when he was pursuing po-
litical ambitions of his own, he was nominated as the Republican can-
didate for Congress in Jackson County. After he was defeated, he
declared he had been counted out illegally and went to Washington to
press his charges before Congress. A congressional committee "viewed
with deepest concern" the evidence he presented and then found a way
to drop the contest, discovering that Reeves had neglected to raise the
issue within the required thirty days after the election of November, 1918.

Judge Reeves's efficient partner in the election fraud cases was Judge
Merrill E. Otis, who looked less solemn than his Calvary Baptist colleague
on the bench but was not any easier on election frauds. Judge Otis also
was a Baptist and a man of great piety, but he hid his severity under an
amiable exterior.

The judges pointed out that they tempered justice with mercy, hand-
ing out penalties that were, with few exceptions, a third of the limit fixed
by the law. Of course, many Democrats considered them excessive.
Agitation over the inevitable persecution complaint reached a high-
point when Senator Harry S. Truman made a direct attack on District

292 TOM'S TOWN

Attorney Milllgan and Judges Otis and Reeves in the United States
Senate.

"The Federal court at Kansas City is presided over by two as violently
partisan judges as ever sat on a Federal bench since the Federalist judges
of Jefferson's administration," Truman asserted*

"Convictions o Democrats are what they want," he added. The junior
Missouri senator buttressed his case with the charge that grand juries
were hand picked and the attitude of jurymen was ascertained by the
court in advance.

"A Jackson County Democrat has as much chance of a fair trial in the
Federal District Court as a Jew would have in a Hitler court or a Trotsky
follower before Stalin/' Truman shouted.

He drew a thunderous retort from Judge Reeves, along with a loud
chorus of denunciation from the press. Reeves declared the Truman
blast "was a speech of a man nominated by ghost votes, elected with
ghost votes, and whose speeches probably are written by ghost writers.*'

The Truman outburst coincided with a fight on the renomination of
District Attorney Milligan for another term. Senator Truman explained
that his objection to Milligan antedated the election fraud prosecutions,
as indeed it did. Milligan was named district attorney in the first place
with Senator Clark's backing and Roosevelt's approval over the* objec-
tions o Tom Pendergast. Then, in 1934, came the Senate race between
Truman and District Attorney Milligan's brother, ending with the brief
flurry which the District Attorney created over alleged election frauds in
the 1934 primary.

Asserting that "Mr. Milligan has been made a hero by t^ie Kansas City
Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch" Truman challenged Milligan's
capacity for the office he held and his conduct in Federal bankruptcy pro-
ceedings. The Department of Justice upheld the District Attorney on
both counts.

Truman returned from Washington to Kansas City to confer with
Pendergast and started back to the capital to continue the effort to block
Senate confirmation of Milligan's renomination. He was interrupted on
the way in Chicago with a call from the White House conveying Presi-
dent Roosevelt's request that he abandon the fight on Milligan.

"Since thfc President wants this, I shall not oppose the confirmation.

OLD MISSOURI 293

although politically and personally I am opposed to Mr. Milligan because
I do not think and never have thought he was fit for the place/* Senator
Truman asserted.

When the confirmation came to a vote, he did not exercise his Senate
prerogatives to demand that his colleagues reject Milligan as "obnoxious"
to him, but he took the floor to express his criticism of the Federal judges
and district attorney and cast the one vote that was entered against Milli-
gan.

Not long after the excitement over the Truman stand died down, the
Federal court announced it would modify the penalties in cases where
pleas of guilty were entered. In all, thirty-six guilty pleas were entered. It
was explained this offer was made to expedite handling of the con-
gested court docket and also to reduce the number of appeals. Some
individuals already convicted by juries returned to the courtroom with
guilty pleas and had their sentences reduced from two, three and four
years in prison to six, eight and nine months in jail.

There were many incidents in the trials which made it clear that in
these cases the courts were not dealing with the ordinary criminal class.
Most of these people were individuals from small homes who supported
themselves in little jobs and were regarded as good citizens before their
involvment in the vote-fraud prosecutions. Many of them were women.
There were, however, some tough customers in the lot along with the
pathetic offenders and the crime for which they were collectively re-
sponsible represented a major violation o the American democratic
order.

Not all the defendants were small-time figures in the political organi-
zation. Curiously, the principal in the case who attracted widest atten^
tion was a woman, and 'the whole sad complication produced by the
ruthless struggle for political power was revealed in her experience. She
was Mrs. Frances Ryan, the Pendergast Twelfth Ward leader, daughter
of a veteran Pfendergast lieutenant. At the time of her indictment and
trial, she was superintendent of the Jackson County Parental Home.
The vote frauds in her ward were of a sensational extent and character,
and she was given two terms of three years each in prison. Judge Otis
remarked in court that she had many good qualities, intelligence,
strength o character and a reputation for charitable activities, but he

294 TOM'S TOWN

added that the frauds in which she was involved were so serious that he
could not grant her application for probation.

So the great ghost hunt proceeded to its conclusion, showing in many
disquieting ways that political corruption was not the simple thing it
sometimes seemed. Costs of the vote fraud cases to the boss machine were
beyond calculation. Lawyers' fees, bail and appeal bonds, court costs and
fines and the expense of caring for the families of the imprisoned ones
ran the bill into the hundreds of thousands. Other costs were harder to
estimate. The expense of the defense forced the organization to increase
the heavy lug on the joints, upping the gambling syndicate's take to
forty-five per cent and even more in some cases. In order to meet the
increased overhead, the joints engaged in phenomenal activity, which
provoked an unfavorable public reaction, calling in turn for more in-
vestigations of crime conditions and more prosecutions. A cycle was set
in motion that spiraled rapidly toward disaster and its operation was
most spectacularly illustrated in the case of the Boss himself.

Pendergast left his sick bed with a tube in his side that kept him alive,
and plunged into the thick of the battle. The excitement of the Federal
court challenge and other opposition had a rallying effect on him and
within seven months after his collapse he completely ignored his doc-
tors' advice to give up business, political and gambling activities. The
rise of his gambling fever was manifested in both his betting and his
political affairs. Like his organization, he gave a deceptive impression
of strength and vigor. Only a few persons besides Uncle Torn himself
had any intimations of how fast time was running out.

THE*!NGRATE

BY THE SUMMER of 1937, Tom Pendergast had recovered sufficiently to
feel able to deal directly with the new Missouri governor, Lloyd C. Stark.
It was high time that an understanding be reached with the Louisiana
apple man, who since his inauguration had shown no consideration for
the powerful Kansas City organization that supported him and had-
been rather too eager in pushing through the General Assembly the
new registration law that was designed to prevent a repetition of the
ghost-vote carnival of 1936. Governor St25rk was about to appoint a*iew

OLD MISSOURI 295

election board of four members to administer this law and he exhibited
no inclination to consult Pendergast concerning these appointees.

The Boss summoned, or rather invited, the Governor to visit him in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, in July 1937. The call reached Stark while
he was returning from a vacation tour in Alaska, and he stopped on his
way home to pay his respects to the Kansas City boss. This social and
political occasion was well attended by representatives of the Missouri
press and the results of the meeting, which became historic, were almost
immediately known to the public. Neither Stark nor Pendergast was
reticent in telling reporters what happened.

By all accounts, Governor Stark was as remote and cold as one of the
snowclad peaks in this delightful vacation land, and Pendergast ex-
hibited his most engaging manners. The Governor later spread the word
around that the Boss was almost abject with his requests in 'this inter-
view, but a picture of Big Tom conducting himself in this fashion when
asking anybody for anything was something you had to see personally to
believe.

Pendergast's requests were not too modest and he didn't waste any
time in coming to the point. He asked Stark to re-appoint his friend
O'Malley as state superintendent of insurance for a four-year term and
he asked for the selection of an Election Board that was "friendly" to
him. Governor Stark bluntly turned down the Election Board request
and compromised on the O'Malley matter by agreeing to permit O'Mal-
ley to remain in office for a year as a holdover. He let Pendergast under-
stand that he wasn't satisfied with O'Malley's conduct of the Insurance
Department and his continuance in office depended on his good be-
havior.

Showing his displeasure over this response, the Boss insisted that he
deserved at least one important appointment in view of his organization's
work for Stark in the primary and general election, and Stark finally
agreed that he could select the state liquor control supervisor, a new
office created by the revised liquor laws, but stipulated that the man
chosen must meet Stark's approval.

Keeping the promise he made in Colorado, Stark named Thomas F.
Fitzgerald, a Kansas City man, to the liquor control office on the Goat
boss's recommendation. This Kansas City Irishman had a line of blarney

296 TOM'S TOWN

that Impressed the Governor along with a reform technique that
baffled him. Mr. Fitzgerald was efficient and energetic but had an iln-
conventional sense of direction. The Governor suggested that he start
cracking down on Kansas City. Fired with the Stark spirit, Fitzgerald
headed toward Kansas City but landed in St. Joseph.

Governor Stark congratulated his new assistant on his vigorous be-
ginning and suggested again that he investigate enforcement in Kansas
City, where the sounds of merriment in the dives were again so loud
that they could easily be heard 175 miles away in Jefferson City. Mr.
Fitzgerald informed the Governor that the liquor regulations were be-
ing observed in model fashion in Kansas City and everything was under
control. Before Stark could figure his way around that one, Mr. Fitz-
gerald was back in the field carrying on his crusade, heading for St.
Louis. His reform ran on about seven months before Stark fired him.

Long before the Fitzgerald affair ended, the battle line between Pen-
dergast and Stark was drawn. Shortly after the Colorado meeting at
which he brushed aside the Boss's request for a friendly Election Board,
the Governor appointed a board consisting of two Republicans, one anti-
Pendergast Democrat Edgar Shook, who had been prominently iden-
tified with the Citizens revolt and one other Democrat who was ac-
ceptable to the Kansas City factions.

Pendergast angrily remarked that the Governor had ignored the pro-
vision for a bipartisan board. "He has appointed three Republicans and
one Democrat," the Goat leader growled.

This action was quickly followed by a more explosive disturbance
when Governor Stark ordered Insurance Superintendent O'Malley to
withdraw from litigation over a second impounded fund involved in the
rate compromise negotiated by O'Malley. This proceeding was an out-
growth of the same controversy that produced the ten-million-dollar fund
which was impounded by the Federal Court. At the same time that one
gr'oup of fire insurance companies sought aid in Federal Court, another
group filed action in a state court to prevent interference with their
rate increase. The excess insurance premiums impounded during the
second dispute amounted to nearly two million dollars. It had reached
the Missouri Supreme Court when Governor Stark ordered O'Malley to
withdraw from the fight to get his compromise accepted.

OLD MISSOURI 297

O'Malley defied the Governor and, in October, 1937, Stark fired him
from the post of state insurance commissioner.

The ousted official called the Governor a polecat and returned to
Kansas City, where he was given a city job with a seven thousand five
hundred dollar salary. The Kansas City Democrats stormed and talked
darkly of reprisals against Stark. City Manager McElroy called him a
polecat, just to make sure he hadn't misunderstood O'Malley. The
Judge created other opportunities to show his contempt for the Gov-
ernor. His stellar performance was given on an occasion when he os-
tentatiously refused to eat a Stark's Delicious apple that was offered him.
"I'll take it home and give it to a dog," he explained.

As the year approached its close, the Missouri Supreme Court, in a
four-to-three decision, rejected the insurance compromise in its en-
tirety the second time that this tribunal had ruled against this settle-
ment. Policyholders recovered all of the impounded premiums under
this decision a total of $1,786,481 but this didn't affect the much
larger sum involved in the other settlement approved in Federal Court.
Distribution of the ten-million-dollar melon -went ahead on the eighty-
twenty basis that Pendergast and O'Malley had arranged for the com-
panies.

, Entering the new year, a review of 1937 showed that the Annapolis-
trained 'Strategist in the governor's office had scored a victory on vir-
tually all counts. The blows he delivered were heavy ones and he had
made a large contribution to the machine opposition for the city elec-
tion campaign in the early months of 1938. The boss regime was ac-
tually in a state of acute^ crisis, but curiously there was a widespread im-
pression that the machine was at the height of its power and Uncle Tom
was in fine fettle. In some important respects, this was not an illusion,
for in its final run before the smashup the machine turned on all the lights
aad shot the works.

FREEDOM BEGINS AT HOME

IT TOOK a surprising amount of time for the Pendergast decline to mani-
fest itself at the polls. The new trend was hardly visible in the city cam-
paign in the early part of 1938, There were many reasons for this phe-

298 TOM'S TOWN

nomenon, some of which have never been satisfactorily analyzed by
earnest political students. Fortunately for the reader's pleasure, the or-
dinary experts in this field had at this time the assistance of an ex-sports
columnist, who still is remembered by some in Kansas City as the out-
standing interpreter *of the political follies of February-March, 1938.

This study began with the visit to town of Westbrook Pegler, the
syndicated writing fellow, who arrived from New York late in Febru-
ary, 1938, when the campaign was swinging into high. That was early
in the period when Mr. Pegler developed a sense of mission, a change
that came over him after being impressed that the eccentrics in the po-
litical arena were more wonderful than pugilists and ball players, and
that statesmen of the press earned more dough than sports writers. Kan-
sas City had reached the zenith of its national notoriety as the Paris
of the Plains, and Mr. Pegler came to tell the nation of the fine points o
the Pendergast razrnataz. He stayed four days, which qualified him as
an authority, for that was by far the heaviest study that any newspaper
expert devoted to the machine riddle in this period.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in Pegler's four-piece essay on Sin-
ful Kansas City is the impression it conveys of the curious atmosphere
that prevailed over this community in the days when the Coalition
citizens were attempting to down Uncle Tom. Mr. Pegler was but dimly
aware that a campaign was in progress and he picked up no suspicion
whatever that the Pendergast victory in the forthcoming election was to
be the last for Uncle Tom. The people he saw and moved among were
not steeped in gloom over the state of the world or the condition of
their souls or the shape of their municipal enterprise. They were, if any-
thing, too joyous. Anyone reading the Pegler reports must conclude that
the Kansas Citians were simply too hardy to feel the depression which
corruption, crime and wickedness inevitably produce. The writer ap-
parently didn't meet anyone who wasn't on the make or on the loose.
If he did, he neglected to mention it.

There was, Mr. Pegler found, both an economic and a historical ex-
planation for the high development of the Kansas City taste for gambling
and hell-raising at night. The historical reason, the columnist wrote,
was that the city had always been an open town and the economic fac-
tor was the livestock industry* Some cattle market *mn told him that

OLD MISSOURI 299

on the few occasions when Kansas City had the lid on, the cattlemen
shipped the stock to Chicago and went along for the fun in the Windy
City casinos and brothels. This explanation took no account of the way
that livestock men figured the margin on freight rates and shrinkage in
marketing their product, and it slighted the hardware dealers, dyers
and cleaners, undertakers and representatives of several other lines of
business who for years had overshadowed the cattlemen in the produc-
tion of rip-snorters.

Although the many light diversions offered in the evening explained
why many citizens tolerated and even took pride in their notorious
machine government, Mr. Pegler recognized the fact that there was a
deeper explanation for Pendergast's success. He got it by consulting City
Manager McElroy and several other people in the know. What it
amounted to was the standard justification for machine rule. It was what
Mr. Pegler called "good, rotten government." It protected business
against strike violence, kept tax rates at a moderate level, reduced rob-
bery and motor theft rates and diverted the energies of the criminal ele-
ment into the vice rackets. And all of these achievements were made pos-
sible by the organization's tie with the underworld and the revenue
from gambling and vice.

Mr. Pegler himself was so favorably impressed with this justification
that he took vigorous exception to the comments of a fellow publicist
who was agitating for Kansas City reform. The critic was William
Allen White of Emporia, whom Pegler referred to derisively as "Branch
Water Bill of the hair shirt state of Kansas." He called attention to the
unreasonableness of the White position when the Kansas editor ad-
mitted that "businessmen and labor, as well as crooks and officeholders
in all a great multitude were beneficiaries of the Kansas City system.
Nevertheless he yearned out loud for a political judgment on the old
saloonkeeper from whom these blessings flow. Always a-wantin* is
Branch Water Bill. Give him good government by a rotten machine and
he wants to risk rotten government by a good one." *

With the delightful vulgarity that characterizes his style, Pegler dis-
missed the questions of moral tone, civil humiliation and the city's self-

* From a copyrighted artidc by Westbrook Pegler, 1938; reprinted by permission of the
New York World-Telegram.

300 TOM'S TOWN

respect as "mere mayonnaise,'* things for the luxury trade. In view of
the fact that the columnist later delivered the most righteous judg-
ment ever passed on Pendergast after Uncle Tom was down and his
machine in ruins one must suppose that Pegler was being whimsical
in 1938, or conclude that the four days in Kansas City had a demoralizing
effect on him.

All of this blather about the city's tolerance and indifference took no
account of the battle that had been waged with increasing vigor since
the Mayerberg uprising in 1932. It left out of the picture the Page and
Southern attacks, the agitation in the churches, the struggles in the
Federal courts, the Star's crusading, the Stark challenge and the opposi-
tion from Washington. The comparatively small amount of crime which
Pegler noticed in his report was actually the most extensive operation in
history with the police working hand in hand with the crooks, which
accounted for the pretty statistical showing. The impression of machine
efficiency in city services and taxes was equally deceptive.

Mr. Pegler was a busy man, and had to hurry on to the next assignment,
so he missed a chance to see just how disturbed the citizens were over
"good, rotten government" in the campaigning that followed his brief
visit. Although the contest was orderly by comparison with some past
performances, the fight was not lacking in intensity. The antimachine
forces selected the rambunctious Colonel Whitten, survivor of the 1934
debacle, as their hope for mayor and named a bipartisan ticket of five
Democrats and four Republicans. Name of the reform movement was
changed from Citizens-Fusion to Coalition but the interests and person-
alities in the leadership were virtually the same. Heroes of the 1932 and
1934 wars with the boss organization, Rabbi Mayerberg and the prin-
cipal figures of KY.M., again went into action, but their efforts under
the Coalition lacked some of the spirit that had characterized the
Mayerberg Charter League and the New Youth Movement in their
early days. There was, however, a notable increase in opposition coming
from two sources the businessmen and the Star.

Strategy of the Star's assault was directed along two main lines. The
first was a drive to make certain that the new election machinery de-r
signed to produce a reasonably honest vote count would function effi-

OLD MISSOURI 301

ciently. The stage for achievement of this goal was set by the state and
Federal governments, with Governor Stark appointing the new election
board occupied by Republicans and anti-Pendergast Democrats to super-
vise the permanent registration law that was pushed through the Legis-
lature in 1937, while the Federal courts in Kansas City kept the vote
fraud issue before the public with the prosecutions dating from the 1936
election.

The Election Board appointed by Stark had completely reorganized
the registration and voting system in a four-month period before the
election. Personnel in the Election Board offices was changed and a new
system of records set up. Efforts to circumvent the new law were check-
mated at almost every turn.

The second main objective in the Star's campaign was the rallying o
business to open defiance of the organization. An interesting thing about
this incitation to revolt was that it was not based on an appeal primarily to
the pocket books of the merchants, grainmen, stockmen, manufacturers
and bankers. Emphasis on costs and taxes was much less pronounced
than it was in 1934. Above the usual cry for frugality and efficiency in
municipal administration, there arose a demand for freedom. It ap-
peared that some of the commercial interests were seeing democratic
rights and responsibilities in a new light as applied to their businesses
and homes after twelve years of machine rule.

This agitation reached its height when one hundred prominent citizens
signed and issued a declaration of principles. Several representatives of
labor were included in this group, but the statement was significant
chiefly for the names of the business leaders it contained, and for the
declaration that the supreme issue of the campaign was not taxes, patron-
age, boodle and the customary list of municipal problems, but the ques-
tion "whether free, democratic government shall endure."

In addition to the new interest in democracy, and the old complaint
over the growing costs of machine control, there was another large factor
in the 1938 difference between the business community and the organiza-
tion. The control of labor wasn't working so well as it had in the past, a
fact that manifested itself in two labor-management struggles that had
Cocked the city in the last year. These issues brought City Manager

3 o2 TOM'S TOWN

McElroy into open conflict with two of the city's most important indi-
viduals, Builder J. C. Nichols and Banker James M. Kemper, both Demo-
crats, and caused T. J. Pendergast himself to intervene.

In the first of these disputes, the building trades strike in the summer
erf 1937, McElroy had drawn the fire of the employers when his police
failed to stop flying squadrons of union men who went raiding on a
wide scale, pulling unorganized workers off of jobs. A committee of
builders and other businessmen demanded the police take more ener-
getic action. When the City Manager defied them, they called a mass
meeting at which some unkind things were said about Uncle Tom and
his organization. That was followed by a meeting with the Boss, who
talked to the employers like a Dutch uncle. After that all parties in the
dispute exhibited more restraint, but it finally ended with the unions
winning wage concessions.

The unions involved in this controversy belonged to the American
Federation of Labor, the largest labor organization in Kansas City and
one whose membership was predominantly in the Democratic Party.
However, the Boss's spectacular championing of their cause in this in-
stance did not signify either an old or a recent conversion to the labor
movement, but rather an intensification of political pressure on business,
and retaliation for opposition coming from that direction.

Mr. Pendergast exhibited much less enthusiasm for the new and less
numerous CJ.O. in the second large labor struggle of the year, but even
here the administration angered the business leaders with its slowness
In cracking down. The issue came to a, head when Ford's labor regu-
lator, Harry Bennett, delivered an ultimatum to the effect that the Ford
plant in Kansas City would be permanently abandoned unless the police
co-operated to his satisfaction in discouraging CJ.O pickets who were re-
sisting an effort to break up their new union. The businessmen's com-
mittee again called indignation meetings to make McElroy njore co-
operative and the pressure became so intense that Pendergast finally
suggested that McElroy should visit Detroit and interview Mr. Ford
himself on his employment policies. The Judge made the trip by plane,
and the press reported that the Detroit motor magnate and his union-
busting director were charmed by the McElroy manners and political

OLD MISSOURI 303

views. Mr. McElroy for his part was delighted with what he heard from
them, and he returned from Detroit announcing blithely:

Everything's lovely, and the goose hangs high,
Soon you will see the Fords rolling by.

The Fords didn't roll from the assembly line as soon as expected, for
it took some time to soften up the pickets, during which there were
hundreds of arrests, shotgun play, tear-gas attacks, stonings and various
other disorders. This struggle was still going on when the citizens pre-
pared to go to the polls in March, 1938.

So the forces and issues involved in the new movement for democracy
were not so clear as they might have been when the Star summed up the
campaign in an editorial on "the issue of the machine over Kansas City."
The editorial carried a note of despair, which was understandable. It ap-
peared on the same page with a campaign roundup forecasting the Pen-
dergast victory two days hence.

On the last Tuesday in March, 1938, the citizens went to the polls in
dignified fashion and rolled up a majority of more than 43,000 for the
head of the Democratic ticket, or about 8,000 above the most optimistic
predictions. The Democratic candidates took all except one of the coun-
cil seats. It was the machine's most remarkable election triumph, de-
serving that rating on several counts. It was the quietest, most orderly and
most nearly honest election held since the conflict entered its major stage.
Fighting in the shadow of the vote fraud trials, the party in power
showed that it had lost none of its hold on honest voters. Although the
Democratic vote totals did not establish another record, the Pendergast
showing was the most impressive ever recorded because it was made in
the face of the most formidable combination yet arrayed against the
ghosts and Rabbits.

Naturally the Boss was elated and he quickly issued a statement to the
press proclaiming four more years' of organization rule and gently
mocking the opposition. Said Mr. Pendergast:

"If it is true, as the Kansas City Star and the Coalition speakers re-
ported, that the Democratic President of the United States was against
us, that the Attorney General of the United States was against us, that
the Governor of the State of Missouri was against us, that the indc-

3 o 4 TOM'S TOWN

pendent Kansas City Star newspaper was against us I think under those
circumstances we made a wonderful showing.

"The only further thing I have to say is that the Democratic office-
holders elected yesterday will go on doing their duty to Kansas City
business interests and to Kansas City generally.

"There never has been and there never will be any reprisals, as was
stated by the Coalition speakers, and the Democratic organization which
I represent will do its utmost for the best interests of Kansas City now,
and for all times in the future."

While the citizens were pondering the implications of this statement
from a power outside the regularly constituted government openly as-
serting his sovereignty, and while the opposition politicians digested the
meaning of that final phrase "for all times in the future" the City
Hall announced the first fruits of the election would be the retention of
Judge McElroy in office and a cleanup of bawdy Fourteenth Street.

Uncle Tom's exultation over the confounding of all of his enemies was
heightened by a message of congratulation from Jim Farley in Washing-
ton. Then he got indirect word of Governor Stark's reaction and his feel-
iag of joy and peace lasted less than one day.

SHOW ME

APRIL FOOL'S DAY, 1938, was a time of great indignation at 1908 Main
Street. Uncle Tom ^endergast saw no humor at all in the roundabout
greeting he received from Lloyd Crow Stark, who expressed his con-
gratulations over the party victory at the Kansas City polls in these
words: "Of course, as a lifelong Democrat, I am always pleased when
the Democrats win." This mealymouthed acknowledgment of his re-
cent defeat was buried in the news that Governor Stark had started an
energetic effort to revive the crusade that was interrupted by the Kansas
City vindication of the machine, and was beginning with a cleanup
through the liquor supervision department. This was accompanied by
reports that the Governor and other important figures in the Democratic
Party outside Kansas City had laid the basis for another assauh oja P$n-
dergast in the August primary campaign coming up next,

OLD MISSOURI 305

The Boss had taken all of this sort of punishment that he could stand
and the Stark expression of partisan satisfaction over the stunning
Pendergast triumph in the city election was the kind of political soph-
istry that slashed the Goat soul to its depths. T. J. Pendcrgast's im-
mediate response was a statement delivered to the press which was a
declaration of war against Governor Stark and William Hirth, the farm
leader who had been Stark's opponent for the gubernatorial nomination
in 1936 but since then had joined forces with Stark in the fight on bossism
in the party.

There were no subtleties or evasions in the Pendergast retort.

"Now, in reference to the Governor of this state," the statement read,
"when he was a candidate for the nomination he had at least five hundred
people in Missouri and Kansas City seeing me from day to day asking for
my support. Amongst them were fifty outstanding Democrats of Kan-
sas City, whom I could mention except that ^ime will not permit.

"I finally met the Governor, who was then a candidate, with my
nephew [James M. Pendergast] and W. Ed Jameson [president of the
Board of Managers of the state eleemosynary institutions] in my office.
After a few remarks of no consequence, I consented to support Mr; Stark
for the governorship. I gave him every ounce of support in the primary
and general election, and after the election in the legislative bodies of
Missouri.

"I have never done a thing in my life except support Democratic
officeholders to the best of my ability. I have not received that kind of
consideration from Governor Stark.

"In conclusion," he said, "let me say that Stark will have to live with
his conscience the same as the rest of us. If his conscience is clear I
know mine is. I now say, let the river, take its course."

Governor Stark remained cool and collected.

"I am perfectly willing to let all the Democrats and all the people of
Missouri be the judge of my honesty and integrity, my actions and my
democracy," he asserted.

Pendergast caught the emphasis on "all the people'* and retorted:

"I am perfectly willing to let the Democrats of Missouri who voted
for him be the judge.**

All observers understood thi$ to mean that the issue between them

306 TOM'S, TOWN

would be decided in the Democratic primary four months hence. The
battle shaped up over the Missouri Supreme Court, with the Boss and
the challenger slugging it out over the nomination of one judge. The
contests for the judicial places traditionally had been conducted along
lines that kept them aloof from the main partisan struggle, and the candi-
dates in this race tried to keep up appearances by personally taking no
part in the heated oratory but their campaign was the stage for one of
the fiercest political struggles in Missouri history.

Stark took the initiative with his support for Judge James M. Douglas
of St. Louis, a young St. Louis man, whom Stark had appointed early
in 1937 to fill a vacancy on the Supreme bench. Judge Douglas voted
with the majority in the four-to-three court decision which threw out
the fire insurance rate compromise arranged by O'Malley. The Judge's
partisans declared that the boss organization sought to punish him for
that decision at the same time it buried Stark for his action on the election
commission and other matters, Pendergast had some difficulty finding a
candidate to oppose Judge Douglas, but the lines finally were drawn
when the organization announced its support for Judge James V. Billings,
a Circuit judge from a quiet section of the state near the Arkansas line.

As his comment on Pendergast's declaration of war indicated, Stark's
one hope rested in "all the people of Missouri." The governor had im-
portant allies in Kansas City in the Star, District Attorney Milligan,
leaders of the Coalition and reform groups and a minority of the legal
fraternity who had formed the Lawyers' Association to oppose machine
domination of the Kansas City Bar Association, but it was clear that the
battle would have to be won outstate and in St. Louis. The St. Louis
assistance for Stark's candidate included such potent forces as the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, spearhead of liberalism in Missouri, and Charles
M, Hay, veteran of the Democratic wars. It did not include Senator Ben-
nett C. Clark, who got Pendergast's support for renomination and suc-
cessfully played both ends against the middle, returning to the Senate
with what he deemed to be a mandate to continue his sabotaging of the
New Deal. With the Democratic support in nominally Republican St.
Louis less than enough to balance the Jackson County majority for Tom's
man, it was seen that the final decision rested in rural Missouri.

William Hirth of Columbia, fiery head of the Missouri Farmers* As-

OLD MISSOURI 307

sociation, was so confident that rural Missouri would rise against the Boss
that he predicted a victory for Stark's side a month before the primary
election. He coupled this forecast with an analysis of Pendergast's situa-
tion which led him to conclude that T. J.- had "overplayed his hand.'*
Speculating on the reasons that guided the Goat leader in deciding to
risk a do-or-die stand, Hirth concluded that he had acted in a jnoment of
blind rage rather than on the basis of a careful survey of his chances.

Perhaps Mr. Hirth was right, but it did seem that the governor was
the one who actually issued the challenge and made it difficult for the
Boss to ignore it without overtly surrendering. Time was running out
for both the machine and its great operator. Even if Pendergast had
not elected to launch a major counteroffensive at this stage, the weaken-
ing attack would have gone on and the organization as events proved
would have found itself in a worse position if it had waited to make
its stand at a later date.

Viewed in this light, Pendergast took the course that was dictated both
by his personal feeling and by a realistic appraisal of the situation. That
he appreciated both the immensity and the inevitability of this undertak-
ing was suggested by the tone of his command to "let the river take its
course."

Apparently no one appreciated more than Governor Stark how little
choice the Boss had in this matter, and no one had a greater suspicion that
Pendergast had but a short time left for political campaigning before
facing judgment* himself in the courts. It was left to the Missouri gov-
ernor to state in the clearest tones the nature and significance of the
issue on the courts. Despite the Hirth confidence that Missouri hadn't
changed fundamentally from the faith, independence and pride it ex-
pressed in the days of old Tom Benton and Vest, Blair and Schurz, a
giant was needed to carry the revival to the people, and Lloyd Crow Stark
was the nearest approximation to that stature in the summer of 1938. His
qualities as a campaigner were not rated particularly high when he en-
tered the contest. He had not had to extend himself to get elected when
Pendergast was behind him and his subsequent forceful performance as
an administrator did not necessarily mean he could arouse the citizens to
do their duty on election day. The governor was not a polished orator,
He didn't inflame audiences and he couldn't unbend easily enough to suit

308 TOM'S TOWN

the Missourians. But he had great energy and determination and won the
respect due a fighter. He didn't have much color but his lantern jaw was
impressive. And when he spoke in the summer of 1938 his words carried
conviction and an urgency that held attention. They sent out waves that
spread over the state east into the Mark Twain country along the Mis-
sissippi, south into the green Ozark hills, west along the Missouri
through the rich farmlands of Little Dixie to its terminus at Kansas
City, northwest into the tall-corn counties. Stark stumped the state tire-
lessly and everywhere he went the crowds turned out to hear him. They
listened with an earnestness that bespoke more than the usual interest
or excitement of campaign time. The Missourians had not been moved in
this way since the Rid Us of Reed battle of 1922.

The great campaigns of the past were recalled by scenes like that of
the Douglas rally in Sedalia, home of the State Fair. Three thousand
men, women and children gathered in Shaffer's Grove for the speakin*
and a fish fry. Neighbors visited happily together under the trees. Crowds
stood before the refreshment booths and hurried through the eating to
rush for the best seats arranged in tiers before a lighted speakers' plat-
form, The speaking began and gradually the throng settled down. A full
moon shed glory on Shaffer's Grove and a voice, amplified to unnatural
volume and quality by loud speakers, charged the night air with a feeling
of alarm and calamity. The people stirred restlessly and then were quiet
for a long period. They did not seem to be in a hurry to leave when the
meeting ended. Watching them, the politicians knew that a ground
swell was coming.

"A sinister and ominous shadow is raising its ugly head in an attempt
to destroy the sanctity of our highest court," the Governor said in the
speech that gave the keynote for his campaign. The shadow took defi-
cite shape and grew as he went along, repeating charges, amplifying,
drawing the whole Boss picture in his effort to convince the voters that
Ais battle was a test between the super-government at 1908 Main Street
and the people of Missouri rather than a dispute over the qualifications
d two candidates for a judgeship.

The campaign reached its zenith a week before the primary election
when Governor Stark invaded Pendergast's home city and spoke before
a crowd that jammed into the Hotel Muehlebach ballrpom at a meeting

OLD MISSOURI 309

arranged by the Democratic Club o Kansas City, newly formed rival
to the Boss club. Stark pulled no punches in the citadel of the machine
power.

Judge Douglas was nominated by a majority of 120,000, most of it
produced by the farms and small towns. Jackson County delivered a
total of 104,000 for Tom's candidate, a majority of 87,000, which repre-
sented a decline in Pendergast voting strength at home but not enough
of a one to inspire any loud cheering over the imminent doom of the
machine. For this reason veteran political writers were inclined to view
the machine setback conservatively. The Star interpreted the results as a
reduction of Pendergast to third place among the state powers. Stark,
the producer of this miracle, was allotted no better than second place.
The Star's designation for No. i man in the Missouri Democracy went
to that famous anti-New Dealer and expert fencerider, Bennett Clark.

The morning after election Pendergast went to his offices at 1908 Main
Street as usual. He appeared to be calm and unworried. Asked to com-
ment on the election, he wanted to be quoted to the effect that the Re-
publican press and the Republican voters had decided the Democratic
contest, and it was true that a considerable number of Republicans voted
for Douglas. Asked if he would support Douglas in the November elec-
tion, Pendergast 'said bluntly that he considered that an impertinent
question. He closed the interview with a sentence on which he probably
had spent much thought.

"In conclusion, let me say that the Democratic Party of Missouri will
need the Democratic Party of Jackson County as it has needed it in the
past, much more than the Jackson County Democracy will ever need the
outstate Democracy."

The formidable threat in this statement was well understood in Jeffer-
son City and elsewhere, and nothing more disturbed the Democratic
peace until after the November election, in which the Kansas City Demo-
crats voted for Douglas along with the rest of the ticket, contributing to a
rousing Democratic victory in Missouri which was in contrast to a
sharp Republican trend in numerous other states.

The next day Colonel E. J. McMahon, the new liquor office super-
visor, fired three of the principal officials in the Kansas City division for
failing to do their duty in a manner satisfactory to Governor Stark. The

3 io TOM'S TOWN

Kansas City spooks came out again, for the heat was on throughout the
city. It would not lift this time until the Kansas City machine was de-
stroyed.

Rumblings of the coming disaster must have been very audible to
Uncle Tom but he was powerless to arrest the course of events or change
his own line of conduct. Evidence that was made public a little later
shows that he turned more feverishly to his gambling books, probably
to seek escape from his other worries as well as to recoup his financial
losses. In the last days of the year he had a run of luck with the ponies.
Records discovered by the government showed a series of daily winnings
in amounts from several hundred dollars to nearly five thousand dollars,
and there was a rumor that in one race he plunged with $20,000 and won
$2485000.

The New Year's celebration on Twelfth Street was the noisiest and
one of the gayest in the memory of Kansas Citians. Governor Stark's
snoopers were among the crowds that packed the street and churned
slowly in and out of the joints. The investigators already had assembled a
surplus of evidence and all the other preliminaries had been attended to
in the operation that made this night the farewell to the Pendergast Free
and Easy.

THE LUG

JXJDGE ALLEN C. SOUTHERN, veteran dispenser o justice in the criminal
division of the Jackson County Circuit Court, was not a gambling man
but he knew when and how to call a bluff. He set about doing this with
a grim look on his poker face in the first month of the year 1939, taking
the lead in this momentous game in cooperation with two other non-
gambling men who were experts in reading the cards Governor Stark
and Federal Judge Reeves.

The bluff that protected the gambling racket had grown immensely
more forbidding since the last time anyone had been so foolhardy as to
oppose it. The earlier grand jury investigations in the courts of Judge
Southern and Judge Page depressed the vice traffic for only a brief period.
Shift in the Kansas City police command from Reppert to Higgins and
the violent removal of Johnny Lazia, regulator of the syndicates, had
the effect of enlarging rather than decreasing the racket operations. Until
Stark, Southern and Reeves teamed up for the final round, no one had
dared to come out openly against the business in the dives, except some
ministers and a forlorn band of P.T.A. ladies. In this period when the
gyp enterprise was making its greatest expansion the only important
challenge to the racketeers came from a pleasant, motherly woman by
the name of Mrs. A. J. Dahlby, and the results in her case were disagree-
able enough to discourage any more agitation along this line until Stark,
Southern and Reeves started working together.

Some of the obstacles which Judge Southern faced in 1939 were illus-
trated forcefully in the Dahlby experience in the fall of 1935. Mrs. Dahl-

311

3 i2 TOM'S TOWN

by's husband was pastor of the Broadway Baptist Church and she helped
him in the pulpit while managing their home and four children. She
was filled with the evangelistic spirit of her Swedish forebears, from
whom she also inherited a rugged constitution. Mrs. Dahlby went with
her husband to India, where they spent a year and a half in missionary
work. Soon after they came to Kansas City, Mrs. Dahlby herself became
a licensed minister and teamed with her husband to make the Broadway
Baptist Church a center of activity that was disturbing alike to the un-
godly and the defenders of the status quo. Husband and wife placed
equal emphasis on preparation for the perfect life hereafter and work
for a better order in Kansas City in the twentieth century. The Reverend
Mr. Dahlby startled conservative pillars of the congregation by declaring
that "it is the church's place to protest against social injustice."

Mrs. Dahlby produced more excitement when she turned the discus-
sion to Kansas City gamblers. She was so eloquent that she started a
movement to boycott all places of business that operated gambling de-
vices, and drew a great hosanna from the Kansas City ministers at the
same time that she frightened the businessmen with the suggestion that
the churches employ the economic reprisal weapon in the service of the
Lord. *

The Executive Committee of the Council of Churches and the Min-
isterial Alliance adopted resolutions approving the Dahlby idea and de-
manding action by the city government to suppress the games* Frank
H. Backstrom, Fusi9nist member of the City Council, introduced a reso-
lution authorizing Mayor Smith to name a committee to investigate
crime conditions. The resolution was promptly tabled, and killed a week
later. This emergency was not one requiring Mayor Smith's attention*
It needed Judge McElroy's attention.

The Judge gave a very cagey performance, showing his remarkable
versatility and utter cynicism. Dropping his usual bluster, he reverted
quickly to the role of a sample, benign country fellow from Dunlap,
Iowa* His courtesy, kindliness and sincerity won the hearts of the delega-
tion from the P.T.A. and women's clubs, headed by Mrs. Dahlby, which
called at the City Hall to get action on the reform.

McElroy singled out Mrs. Dahlby for attention, praising her work for
public morals and offering to engage Convention Hall for an immense

PAY-OFF 313

rally to be addressed by the lady preacher. Mrs. Dahlby glowed and
accepted.

"You know,** she said, *Tm glad I came down here. You are a grand
man. You look like my dad."

The Judge blushed, tossed his silver mane and went on to talk in-
timately of conditions that shocked a sober country boy like himself, who
never took a drink, or smoked, or gambled. He told how the gambling
fever had spread among the best people of the town, mentioning the
University Club, the Kansas City Club and the Mission Hills Country
Club, popular retreats of wealthy citizens wjio publicly deplored the
morals of machine government.

"Gosh," said the Judge, "I guess I am the only highbrow here today.
Just take a look at this card. The Kansas City Club is announcing that
a series of keno games is to start at the club, for members and their
families and friends."

He showed the ladies a pile of petitions from owners of buildings pro-
testing against police interference with "recreation."

Concluding his little sermon, he asserted: "I could take you to the
Kansas City Club, where I've been a member thirty-five years, and you
probably would find about one hundred members gambling, including
many leading business and professional men. Some of these rnen are of
such standing you might hold them up as patterns for your boys."

The ladies nodded and blinked their eyes in confusion. They de-
parted still under the charm of the City Manager. When they got out in
the fresh air and analyzed the import of the Judge's propaganda that
the town's social leaders and businessmen wanted gambling conditions
as they were, a few of them were disheartened. Mrs. Dahlby was not
deflected from her purpose. By this time she had collected evidence that
the masses wanted to be saved from the gambling evil if the classes did
not. She was deluged with letters, most of them from the lower social
orders, praising her good work. One came from a boy in prison saying
he might have been directed to a useful life if the Baptist crusader had
appeared on the scene earlier. Another came from a housewife who said
she was planning to commit suicide after hocking her wedding ring for
money which she lost in a tango game.

"I had planned to commit suicide in their horrible place Thursday, the

3 i4 'TOM'S TOWN

seventh, which Is their bank night," she wrote, "but it seems the merciful
Lord has intervened by putting it in your heart to start this crusade. I
hope it is on the level, and will wait till the fifteenth, and if it is not closed
by then I will know that the Good Lord wants me to sacrifice myself to
free a money-mad crazy people from this horrible blood-sucking devil
game tango."

It is not known if the lady carried out her threat to die on the fifteenth.
Mrs. Dahlby unfortunately had to leave town two days before that date,
dropping her campaign in midflight. Instead of getting a chance to
speak in Convention Hall, as the City Manager had promised, Mrs.
Dahlby received a call from a strange woman who visited her home,
alarming her with warnings and offer of money to change her interests.
This messenger was followed by a man who represented himself as a
lawyer working along the same lines. When these maneuvers failed to
silence Mrs. Dahlby, the goon squad went to work, employing the tech-
nique developed by gangsters and blackmailers to break the nerves of
strong men. For two days the telephone in the Dahlby home rang steadily
with calls from the ghostly agents of terror. Members of the family who
answered the phone heard a sepulchral voice never the same twice
saying, "Prepare to be taken for a ride," or "We'll get you," or "We'll
drive you out of town." Mrs. Dahlby wilted when the threats were
directed at her children as well as her husband and herself. Thirteen
days after her crusade started, she left Kansas City with her children to
be gone for several weeks.

The incident provoked great indignation, a general feeling of inse-
curity and helplessness, and no police action.

Judge Southern encountered the same kind of resistance, With varia-
tions on a wider scale, when he entered the January offensive against the
gamblers. The Judge had as much determination as Mrs. Dahlby and
considerably more skill and resources. His action coincided with the
drive by Governor Stark, who marked 1939 as the cleanup year for
Kansas City by ordering his attorney general to proceed to this front on
t the first day of January. Southern's co-operation with the Stark investiga-
tion was signified in mid-January when the sheriff staged surprise raids
and the Judge issued search warrants for two of the syndicates' principal
gambling resorts the Fortune Club for bingo and the Snooker Club.

PAY-OFF 315

This was a blow at the heart of the racket, for the Fortune was the
special property of the machine's collector of the gambling lug.

A day later the Judge called a panel of twenty-four citizens for a^rand
jury investigation, ordering a secret session to guard the jurors from in-
timidation and danger. Southern then found that popular sentiment
against interfering with gambling and fear of the underworld were still
high, for only twenty of the grand jury panel appeared in court and ten
gave various excuses to get out of the duty. Proceedings were continued
a week and meanwhile the conflict over the Fortune Club went forward.
That action took two sensational turns when Charles V. Carollo, suc-
cessor of Lazia, was brought into the picture as the secret owner of the
club, and Judge Southern excluded the county attorney, W. W. Graves,
Jr., from the investigation.

A week later the grand jury panel was completed and notice was finally
served that this was the bear cat of all investigations undertaken in the
state courts. Alex S. Rankin, a pioneer of the N.YJM.-Fusion reform, was
named foreman of the jury which the Star called the People's Jury in
recognition of the fact that it contained no one who was likely to be
friendly to the machine interests. Judge Southern and Governor Stark
worked together to arouse the jurors and the public to the nature of the
battle ahead. The Judge kept County Attorney Graves and Attorney
General McKittrick at arm's length in the proceedings, pointing out that
neither of these officials had exhibited any awareness of crime conditions
in Kansas City that needed investigation. The jury had the assistance of
three special aids to the attorney general, appointed at Governor Stark's
insistence, and of a staff of investigators engaged by the governor with a
fifty-thousand-dollar crime fund which he jammed through the Legisla-
ture.

"You will need no one else in the grand jury room, gentlemen," Judge
Southern explained.

It was then that the intimidation squad started to work on Judge
Southern. This was a major tactical error, accounted for by the fact that
the Kansas City gangsters did not know as much about Independence
and the Southerns as they should have. Judge Southern was at all times
prepared to take care of himself and one notable exhibition of that fact
had occurred in the building strike emergency of 1937, when word

316 TOM'S TOWN

reached Independence that one of the union flying squads was going out
from Kansas City to take nonunion workers off construction jobs in the
old county seat town. The Judge, who owned property on which build-
ing work was under way, oiled up his shotgun and went on sentry duty.
No flying squadrons paused in the neighborhood where the rugged
jurist held forth, two loaded shotguns close at hand.

Kansas City was apprised of the full measure of the Southern temper
a few days after the grand jury session started when the Judge quietly
interrupted proceedings long enough to hand out a statement which he
had written in his own hand and which he asked reporters to deliver to
their editors. It read:

Atlthe beginning of this term of court two public officials importuned me
not to call a grand jury at this time because it would hurt the Democratic or-
ganization. Since that time I have received covert threats and warnings, the
last yesterday, to the effect that if I did not call this investigation ofFcertain
public officials and police, who may be under investigation by the grand jury,
would frame or have framed evidence Vvfith assistance of denizens of the under-
world which attacks my character and personal moral integrity.

You will understand that the purpose is to frighten and intimidate me for
ks effect upon this investigation, and that, of course, if such framed evidence
comes to your attention it is false and malicious and libelous,

Please notify your superiors of this communication and oblige,

JUDGE ALLEN C. SOUTHERN.

The Democratic judge from Independence then turned back to his
work with the grand jury, but the investigation was interrupted two
days later when County Attorney Graves filed application for a writ of
prohibition before the Missouri Supreme Court, contending the Southern
investigation was an irregular proceeding because the prosecutor was
barred from the grand jury room. Judge Southern went to Jefferson City
to testify at the hearing on the writ of prohibition, and the Supreme
Court, which so recently had figured in the Stark-Pendergast battle for
control, quickly settled the issue by rejecting the Graves application.

Back in Kansas City, Judge Southern assembled the grand jury to hear
his instructions for an unlimited investigation, a dramatic charge in
which it was clear that Prosecutor Graves, Big Charley Carollo and
the gambling syndicate were the main targets. Governor Stark had de-
manded action against the comity attorney at the outset of tiie inquiry,

PAY-OFF 317

with the statement: "His continued failure to prosecute ghastly felonies
justifies his immediate removal from office." The grand jury complied
by indicting the prosecutor on three counts and the attorney general
later instituted ouster proceedings against him.

The first count against Graves was based on his failure to prosecute
Charles Gargotta, Lazia lieutenant, for his attempt to kill Sheriff Bash in
the Armour Boulevard battle of 1933. Gargotta was the beneficiary of
numerous continuances and a dismissal after he was acquitted on per-
jured testimony at his first trial. The Southern grand jury revived the
charge against him by indictment, and he pleaded guilty and went to
prison at long last.

Counts two and three against Graves alleged that he was present in
the Oriental Club when liquor was sold on a Sunday in violation of the
state law and present when it was sold without a state license, and that
he did nothing about these violations. Graves closed his career as prose-
cutor with his most vigorous action, spending the last year resisting the
state's effort to remove him from office. He won a directed verdict of
acquittal in a Jackson County Circuit Court, when the Judge sustained
a defense demurrer to the state's evidence in the cases initiated by the
Southern grand jury indictments, but he finally was ousted from office
along with the Jackson County sheriff in an action before the state
Supreme Court showing that there had been a breakdown in law en-
forcement.

Evidence produced in the various investigations and prosecutions
showed that the gambling racket had grown to the proportions of a major
industry in Jackson County. A commonly accepted estimate was that it
did an annual gross of twelve million. Judge Southern estimated it at
twenty million.

The Southern effort was supplemented and enlarged by Federal Judge
Reeves, who roared into action with a charge to a new Federal grand
jury at the same time that Southern was directing the Circuit Court
attack. Reeves gave a longer and much more fiery charge than any he
had offered in the vote fraud investigations, for he was after bigger fish
the higher-ups this time.

**Kansas City today is a seething caldron of crime, licensed and pro-

3 i8 TOM'S TOWN

tected," he thundered in an address that aroused the grand jury to un-
precedented action.

The Calvary Baptist crusader on the Federal bench placed his finger
on Carollo in his instructions and coupled this with a fascinating ex-
planation of "the lug" as it operated in the gambling racket. From this
assessment for protection from police interference, the syndicate annually
raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance underworld opera-
tions and political activities. Judge Reeves was unable to compute the
total revenue realized from this source, but he presented enough evi-
dence to indicate that it was a figure of staggering proportions. In this
connection he gave the jury an exposition of the income tax law and the
weapons it offered for prosecution of the syndicate collectors.

The Reeves charge revealed how much spadework for this assault on
the machine had been done by Federal operatives working out of Wash-
ington. The Judge quoted at length from an official government report
covering the findings of witnesses and agents who had probed into the
Kansas City racket. This report was filled with records of big daily pay-
offs, hints of murder and frequent mention of the Big Man who ruled
the underworld. The government agent quoted by Reeves identified
this individual only as the Big Man or "the subject," commenting: "I
never saw any one individual, in all the years I have been connected
with the United States government, who seemingly had so much power
as the subject.'*

To give the grand jury some idea of the extent of the traffic they were
challenging, Judge Reeves read some details on the operation of just one
resort, described by him as "the least dreadful of the places of crime in
Kansas City . . . located within a residential district, within a stone's
throw of some of the biggest and most important churches of Kan-
sas City" obviously Carollo's Fortune Club. The government figures
showed that this place paid one of the partners controlling it $30,500 in
1937 and $35,000 in 1938 and, as Judge Reeves remarked, this was but
one of hundreds of resorts in the city.

An interesting sidelight on the "partnership" principle in the gambling
syndicate was given a little later when Carollo was called to judgment
for income tax evasion. Then it was shown how he got control of the
Fortune. A couple of chumps from Los Angeles had started the club ia

AFTER WHAT
HAPPENED
BEFORE

^ Ray i n The Kansas City Star

Short Memory

The Roosevelt administration's part in tbe cleanup was recalled by this cartoon in
the city campaign o 1940.

3 2o TOM'S TOWN

June, 1934. Six months later Carollo notified them he was cutting him-
self into a half-interest, figuring his protection was worth that much to
his new partners. In March, 1938, he had grown so fond of the Fortune
that he sent a letter to his partners advising them he was taking over
the other half, enclosing a bill of sale and five thousand dollars each for
their interest in a business that by conservative estimate was earning
sixty thousand dollars a month.

In the government report read to the jury by Reeves, there were several
instances in which this partnership device was worked, but the principal
account had to do with the lug. This assessment usually started at twenty
per cent of the take when a dive was established and immediately began
to climb. It amounted to forty per cent and more in some cases during
the vote fraud prosecutions when overhead costs were heavy. Witnesses
quoted in the report told of the efficiency of the system in protecting the
Big Man, mentioning two incidents in which informants were put on
the spot and stating that "None of the persons contacted by me were
willing to appear in open court, stating that it was their firm conviction
that if they did so or if it ever got out that they ha4 'talked' these men
would see to it that they were taken for a ride or killed inside twenty-four
hours."

Satisfied that the jurymen were sufficiently impressed with the gravity
of the situation, Judge Reeves concluded:

"Every citizen ought to be eager and anxious for his country's welfare
to move upon a situation that is as startling as the one that I have given
you today. Gentlemen, you have a great responsibility."

At the time that this investigation got under way it was generally
believed that Carollo, Lazia's former bodyguard, was the chief figure
of the underworld. However, Federal authorities later disclosed in-
formation that indicated Carollo was but the front for an even bigger
man,, another Italian who was named by the agents but was not brought
into court. But Charles Vincenzo Carollo born in 1902 in Santa Ris-
tino, Italy, and never naturalized as an American citizen was sufficiently
important to show that the Federal government was striking at the
heart of the racket in its great assault of 1939. That impression was
* heightened later in the year ? when Carollo was broiight into court for

PAY-OFF 321

sentencing for income tax violation and District Attorney Milligan de-
clared:

"According to the records, Charles Carollo was an intimate friend and
companion of one John Lazia, who met his death violently at the hands
o unknown gunmen July 10, 1934. Accompanying Mr. Lazia was the
defendant, Carollo, at the time he met his death.

"John Lazia at the time of his death was reputed to be the vice lord
o the underworld of Kansas City. The investigation into the back-
ground of this defendant reveals the fact that after the death of Lazia
this defendant took over the authority exercised by Lazia in his lifetime,
relative to gambling and rackets carried on in Kansas City, Missouri;
that he grew in power even greater than his predecessor; that he had a
full entree into the offices of the high officials in the city administration.
According to the testimony, he was seen going into and out o the
private office of the former city manager; that he had full entree into
the police headquarters, and almost daily was a visitor at the office of the
director of police.

"The testimony reveals that the defendant became the collector of the
lug that was imposed on the gambling rackets of Kansas City who paid
large sums of money monthly for the privilege of carrying on gambling
games unmolested by the police officers of the city."

It was later admitted that the reports of Carollo's actual authority in
the underworld were exaggerated at this time 3 and that his chief func-
tion was as collector of the lug and contact man with city officials!
Total income from the lug could not be estimated, but District At-
torney Milligan's statement gave an idea of its size, showing that annual
collections oa only nineteen of the joints had jumped from $53,161 in
1935 to $103,275 in 1938. Carollo finally admitted that he collected the
lug for Pendergast, among others, making direct payments to the Boss
or his secretary. It was estimated that Pendergast got forty per cent of
the collection, the remainder being divided among five or six others
in the syndicate.

These revelations, and more, were made public in the months follow-
ing the dramatic charge to the Reeves grand jury.

While the Reeves grand jury proceeded to ky its great siege, the South-

322 TOM'S TOWN

era grand jury drew in its net filled with big and little fry. When the jury
brought in its final report March n, it raised the total number o indict-
ments to 167 and announced that it had done no more than lift the "edge
of the curtain." In addition to the Graves, Gargotta and Carollo indict-
ments, the haul included indictment o the presiding judge of the County
Court and a former judge of the Court for corruptly allowing a claim
for $9,781.33 to pay for remodeling and repairing Gil P. Bourk's Jeffer-
sonian Democratic Club, Inc.; indictment of a cleaners* and dyers' union
business-agent for two bombings; and indictment of numerous liquor
law violators along with the gamblers. The blows were so impressive that,
contrary to expectations of Twelfth Street old-timers, the city police de-
cided to keep the lid on the dives after the Southern grand jury recessed.
Police Director Otto Higgins ordered a surprise raid on the one spot
that defied the order the horse book retreat managed by Benny Port-
man, the racketeer who had unwillingly acted as a go-between in the
kidnaping of Mike Katz nine years earlier. Benny was constitutionally
unable to believe in a reform order. He continued to operate until several
years after the 1939 shutdown, and then he was the last of the big-time
veterans to be slain in the usual manner.

Popular attention was diverted from the Southern jury's work by re-
ports on the progress of the Reeves jury. Early in March it was reported
that the Federal investigation had broadened beyond the gambling racket
to include insurance graft, with the jury inquiring into the disposition
of a mysterious $447,000 fund. A subpoena was issued for A. L. McCor-
mack, a stranger to most Kansas Citians. A second subpoena was issued
for Walter H. Eckert, Chicago attorney for the trustees of Charles R.
Street, the insurance executive who figured in the Missouri Compromise
pay-off. In mid-March the jury issued subpoenas for a group of Eastern
insurance executives, and they came to tell what they knew of the "mys-
tery fund."

Entering April, exactly a year after Boss Pendergast had commanded
tie river to take its course, the air was filled with rumors and reports o
developments in Kansas City and Washington which said that the Reeves
investigation had caught a bigger man than the Big Man the grand jury
was charged to bring in.

PAYOFF 323

DAY IN COURT

THE STORY of T. J. Pendergast's last days of freedom is scattered in gov-
ernment reports, court records, newspaper stories, private letters apd
recollections of friends. This material has never been brought together
in coherent form, but the main outlines and details of the picture created
by the public record are sufficiently clear to leave a lasting impression. It
shows the magnitude of the nightmare of deception, conflict and alarm
in which the Boss lived for weeks, months and even years before the
final reckoning in the spring- of 1939. Among other things, it compels
respect for the massive staying powers of Tom Pendergast.

The struggle began at the height of his success, long before his decline
became evident to observers. He must have known he was overreaching
himself, but he exhibited no disposition to yield. A statement presented
at his sentencing by District Attorney Milligan shows that in 1935 the
Pendergast horse-race bets and losses had attained proportions which
meant he had to seek income outside his normal sources. The $315,000
insurance graft he obtained in 1935 and 1936 represented but a fraction
of the amount he needed to finance his gambling operations and support
himself in the style to which he had become accustomed.

A report that the Boss put the bite on intimates for a million dollars
or more was published in the Star not long after his crash. In that ac-
count Pendergast's old associate, John J. Pryor, was reported to have
confided to a friend his misgivings over the way the Boss was handling
his affairs in the spring of 1938. He related that Pendergast's calls for large
gifts from friends started in 1937 and mentioned that his gambling fever
had grown progressively worse since 1934.

William D. Boyle, Pryor's partner, was said to have issued numerous
checks or drafts for Pendergast for suspiciously large amounts which he
requested Pryor ^to countersign. On several occasions, the Star story
added, he even called Pryor from his bed at night with requests to with-
draw sums from ten to a hundred thousand dollars for the Boss.

**I told Boyle that T. J.'s craze for betting was going to get us all in
trouble," Pryor was represented as saying by his unnamed friend. "Boyle

324 TOM'S TOWN

said we had to come through. I told Bill several times that giving T. J.
all that money would ruin us and T. J. both."

It was estimated that the Pryor & Boyle companies dug up a million
dollars in this manner and that the Old Man had blown between five
and six million dollars on the horses since 1933, "a million a year at least."'

The bookkeeping system for this amazing operation required the
services of a wizard. How T. J. Pendergast managed to keep going at all
is something of a mystery. A large staff o Treasury experts spent years
trying to run down the transactions, but there were some details that
baffled them. The Boss rarely used his bank account. Currency, drafts,
telegraph money orders and express vouchers in the names of other per-
sons were the forms in which he was paid. When he was in other cities,
money was transmitted to him from Kansas City under assumed names,
A part of his income was reported to the Federal government on the re-
turns of associates or trusted employees. An ordinary individual could
have spent a large part of his working time figuring up this scheme, yet
T. J. was able to do it on the run while attending to his multitudinous
other affairs.

Despite the secrecy, the worry and the bother which grew increasingly
more complicated, Tom Pendergast managed to present a fairly serene
face to the world and to most of his friends.

When the net closed around him in March and April of 1939, Pender-
gast faced the emergency with perhaps less than his usual cairn, but he
was still very much in command of himself and his organization. The
attack against the machine was proceeding on four fronts from the
Federal government, from the Criminal Court of the Jackson County
Circuit, from Governor Stark, and from the local political opposition
but there was no relaxing anywhere of the organization's resistance and
the moves reflected the touch of a knowing and steady guiding hand.

While the Reeves grand jury was calling witnesses in the insurance
graft "mystery fund," T. J* was sending emissaries back to Washington
to plead his cause with the national party leaders. One of his chief envoys
was Otto P. Higgins, the police director, himself about to be drawn into
the Federal income tax dragnet, Higgins spent a week in the national
capital f utilely trying to see President Roosevelt. The chief result of his

PAY-OFF 325

mission was a demonstration on every side that the Roosevelt administra-
tion was one hundred per cent behind the efforts of Governor Stark and
District Attorney Milligan. Higgins was followed to Washington by
the Boss's nephew and heir to the Goat crown, Jimmy Pendergast, who
got more bad news.

Signal that the long hunt had reached its end was given April 4 when
Attorney General Frank Murphy and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the
bureau of investigation, Department of Justice, flew to Kansas City to
confer with District Attorney Milligan and the large F.B.I. staff that had
been assembled there. The trip drew national attention and some political
experts immediately announced that it was a New Deal grandstand effort
to publicize the Kansas City cleanup as a counterattraction to Thomas E.
Dewey's racket-busting show in New York.

Thus ended the Federal investigation that had begun three years
earlier, in April, 1936, with a casual inquiry into the income account of
Ernest H. Hicks of the Chicago law firm of Hicks & Felonie. Hicks had
died the previous October and the Bureau of Internal Revenue dis-
covered, in a routine examination of the partnership books, an item of
$100,500 that required explanation. This was a clue to the first install-
ment on thf Missouri Compromise pay-off, but that fact was not known
at the time or for some time afterward.

Robert J. Felonie, the surviving partner of Hicks & Felonie, had been
chief counsel for the fire insurance companies. The Federal investi-
gators learned that the $100,500 on the partnership books was the record
of a transaction with Charles R. Street, the insurance executive who
represented the companies in the Missouri Compromise deal. The
figure was the total amount of fourteen checks from various insurance
companies which Street had deposited in the partnership account May 9,
1935. On the same day the partnership had repaid by checks to Charles
R. Street the entire $100,500. The investigation then moved to Street,
who said that the money did not represent taxable income for him as
it had been turned over to someone else. He refused to identify the
recipient but finally intimated that the money went to an important
political figure in Missouri though not a public official. Under pressure
from the Bureau, he later explained that he could not reveal the name
of the person involved until the liner Queen Mary arrived in New York

326 TOM'S TOWN

on her maiden voyage in June, 1936. Federal agents checked the Queen
Mary's passenger list and found Tom Pendergast.

The investigation at this point was still far from its goal, however,
After Pendergast's return on the Queen Mary, Street again refused to
divulge the name of the man in the deal or to discuss the nature of
the transaction. He filed an amended tax return on March 8, 1937, and
paid the tax on the mysterious $100,500. It appeared for a time that the
bribe had been successfully covered up and the investigators encountered
a further handicap when Street died in 1938. But by this time the Fed-
eral agents had taken a large interest in the case and knew where they
were headed. One of the untold stories in the long search, and one that
may never be told until he is ready to tell it, concerns a Missouri news-
paperman in Washington who has been credited by some authorities
with reviving the Treasury intelligence unit's interest in the case after
Street closed the door. It is said that he provided leads and information
which convinced the agents that the $100,500 was part of a larger pay-off
connected with the Missouri insurance settlement.

Further help from Missouri was given by District Attorney Milligan
in Kansas City and by Governor Stark, who was reported to have con-
ferred on this matter with both President Roosevelt and Henry Morgen-
thau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury. The hunt quickened with the acci-
dental discovery of a special fund of $317,000 which Street maintained.
Checks from Street to A. L. McCormack, Missouri insurance man who
figured in the case, opened another trail. Elmer L. Irey's men of the
Treasury Intelligence operated in many cities winding up their extraor-
dinary search in the Pendergast financial labyrinth. Final break came
when District Attorney Milligan called the insurance executives before
the grand jury and prevailed on them to use their influence to get Agent
A. L. McCormack to tell the inside story. After a long sweating, the
agent went to Milligan's office and haltingly told the tale which filled in
the missing pieces of the Missouri Compromise riddle.

Three days after Attorney General Murphy and G-man Hoover made
their flying visit to Kansas City, the Federal grand jury returned its first
indictment of Pendergast for violation of the income tax law, along with
ai* indictment of R. Emmet O'Malley under the same law. The Boss
went to his arraignment with a dignified step and a placid air. His blue

PAY-OFF 327

eyes were bright and his powerful hands steady when he stood in the
United States marshal's office. A detailed and dramatic account of the
Boss in this scene was written for the Star by Paul Fisher, who reported
that Pendergast's only show of emotion occurred when his fingerprints
were about to be taken. One of his lawyers attempted to help him take
off his overcoat and Pendergast shrugged him away.

Til take it off/' he said audibly enough to be heard by Reporter Fisher.
"There's nothing the matter with me. They persecuted Christ on Good
Friday, and nailed him to the Cross."

It was April 7, 1939 Good Friday and oi^this day Emmet O'Malley,
visiting in the East, went into the Catholic Cathedral in Baltimore, Mary-
land, to pray for his soul.

Pendergast's good humor returned immediately after he had taken off
his overcoat without help. He flashed a smile at his lawyer. His son, T. J.,
Jr., and his nephew, Jim, stood near by.

A deputy marshal inquired if Pendergast wanted the newspaper
photographers to photograph him having the prints taken.

"Hell, they have a million," Pendergast growled.

"You are five feet nine, aren't you?"

"I was," the Boss replied with a chuckle. "I've grown shorter* They
say, you know, that age shortens a man."

"Your hair is gray?"

"What's left of it is gray." -

Then the Goat leader and his party went before the commissioner of
the court, where Pendergast was released on a ten-thousand-dollar bond
and told to appear in Federal Court April 24 to have his trial date set.
There were numerous friends of T. J. in the group that watched when
he turned to leave, and hands reached out to pat him on the back. He
walked out with impressive dignity.

Later in the month the Federal grand jury indicted Pendergast on a
second count for income tax evasion and this interval was filled with
the lightning and thunder of the storm that was toppling the machine.
District Attorney Milligan was in charge of five Federal agencies on
special Kansas City assignment. United States agents uncovered a nar-
cotics ring that was taking an estimated twelve million dollars a year
from addicts, and the Reeves grand jury returned thirty-three indict-

TOM'S TOWN

merits in that case. City Manager McElroy resigned and Mayor Smith
seized his powers. O'Malley took a leave from his post as City Water
Department director and Police Director Higgins resigned. Governor
Stark directed an intensive offensive in the General Assembly for a new
bill designed to end Home Rule in Kansas City and restore control of
the police to the governor.

Mayor Smith got the Council to order an audit of the city books, and
a second audit was started by the Civic Research Institute while pressure
was put on the County Court for a county audit. The Star did not wait
for the audits but started a series of disclosures based on the analyses and
findings of reporters working with records made available by the new
Smith regime at the City Hall and the Federal investigation.

The Federal grand jury lifted the lid on the garbage scandal with the
revelation that members of Pendergast's family held two fifths of the
shares in the Sanitary Service Company. Examination of City Hall rec-
ords uncovered the $356,000 water leak scandal, involving Pryor and
McElroy. There was something new every day.

On May Day, Pendergast and O'Malley went before Federal Judge
Otis to enter formal pleas of not guilty and have their trials set. They
were followed immediately by Charley Carollo, indicted for using the
mails to defraud in the Fortune Club operation, and he also pleaded
not guilty. Following him were three ringleaders in the narcotics racket,
who also pleaded not guilty. The defense still held tight all along the
line.

The next day brought a sign of the frantic disturbance within the
organization when it was learned that Edward L. Schneider, secretary-
treasurer of seven of Pendergast's companies, had mysteriously disap-
peared. His motor car was found empty in the middle of the Fairfax
Bridge over the Missouri River, and inside it were two suicide notes of
farewell to his wife and daughter. Investigation disclosed that he had
made a full statement of his transactions for Pendergast to the grand jury
three days before this incident. One of the last persons to see him alive
was Otto Higgins, the former police director, who visited him at his
home less than two hours before the Schneider car was driven on the
bridge. Higgins shed no light on the mystery. Schneider's body was re-
covered from the rivet five days later and the case remained unsolved.

PAY-OFF 329

In the days that followed, the political attack grew, the Federal grand
jury widened the scope of its income tax investigation, and the Boss
finally decided to surrender. On the twenty-second of May, T. J. Pender-
gast went to the Federal Court to plead guilty to both indictments
against him. A large part of the hearing was devoted to testimony from
his physician giving a detailed report of the Boss's state of health. He
had been a very sick man. Following the heart attack in New York in
1936, he had undergone three operations for the correction of an intestinal
obstruction and this had been managed by the construction of an arti-
ficial device in his side. His physician would not say whether his life
expectancy was good for five years.

The total tax due on Pendergast's evasion was $830,494.73, with penal-
ties, and the government agreed to settle the bill for $350,000. Judge Otis
sentenced Pendergast to serve fifteen months in Federal prison and fined
him $10,000 on one count. The court set the sentence at three years on the
second count but suspended it with probation for five years. There was
an immediate outcry from antimachine quarters over the seeming mild-
ness of this punishment. Judge Otis defended his judgment, pointing
out that in assessing the penalty the court could not give special consid-
eration to the source of the money that was hidden from the tax collector.
The judge obviously gave some weight to consideration of the prisoner's
health but it soon thereafter became evident that his sentence was not a
mild one. Examination of the terms of the probation showed that this
amounted to exile for the political boss, and it was in effect a life term.

Five days after Pendergast's day in court, O'Malley entered a plea of
guilty to income tax evasion and was sentenced to a year and a day in
prison and fined five thousand dollars. Of the four principals in the in-
surance compromise pay-off, Pendergast and O'Malley were the only
ones who went to prison. Charles R. Street, the insurance executive who
raised the money, was dead. A. L. McCormack, the agent who was the
go-between and later served as a government witness, finally got off
with probation on a two-year sentence based on a contempt of court
charge covering his part in the corrupt settlement.

The Federal investigation continued and resulted somewhat later ia,
the sentencing of several other important figures in the machine. Con-

330 TOM'S TOWN

tractor John J. Pryor was given a two-year term for income tax evasion
and the investigation revealed his earnings were the highest in the boss-
favored company. Matthew S. Murray, who had served as Missouri
director of the WPA and also director of public works in Kansas City,
drew a two-year term for failing to pay taxes on about $90,000. It was
estimated that two hundred and fifty million dollars was spent on the
projects under his supervision in the Missouri WPA and the Kansas
City Public Works Department. His defense in the income tax case
was highlighted by his contention that some fifty thousand dollars he
received was nontaxable income because it represented gifts from Pryor
and Pendergast.

Another who took the trail to the Federal prison at Leavenworth was
Otto P. Higgins, who was indicted not long after he resigned as police
director. He pleaded guilty to evading payment of taxes on $65,170 of
unreported income received during the great part of his term in office
and was given a two-year term. He was followed to Leavenworth peni-
tentiary by Big Charley Carollo, collector of the gambling syndicate,
who drew 'sentences totaling eight years one year for using the mails
to defraud in a lottery, three years for failing to report a large part of
$654,391 income over four years, and four years for perjury in an effort
to conceal his operations as the machine's collector of the lug on gam-
bling houses. After arriving in Leavenworth, he was involved in a
conspiracy to smuggle contraband articles into the prison and was trans-
ferred to Alcatraz.

These were the major actions of the cleanup that started in 1939 and
they required many months for completion, Meanwhile, the assault on
the machine proceeded along many other lines, with audits, grand jury
investigations, court trials and general agitation that resulted in the
retirement of numerous city officials* the resignation of the presiding
judge of the County Court and the removal of the county prosecutor and
the sheriff. The actions that were to bring about those changes had been
initiated or foreshadowed by the time that the Boss departed for prison*

The two old partners in politics and insurance, Pendergast and O'Mal-
ley, made the short trip to the Federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, the
same day, May 29, 1939. Following his usual custom, T. J. Pendergast
arose early and left i& a car, accompanied only by his son and nephew.

PAY-OFF 33*

The party arrived at the east prison gate at eight-forty o'clock in the
morning and Uncle Tom, bag in hand, walked quietly to the entrance
without looking back. Throughout this long ordeal he had shown no
weakening of his iron nerve. He didn't break until after he was dressed
in and saw the photograph of himself in convict's uniform. Then the
heart of T. J., for a second time, almost stopped forever.

COUP AND DOUBLE CROSS

MAYOR BRYCE B. SMITH, the big little bakery man, realized his ambition
to take over City Manager McElroy's office and run Kansas City in the
last nine months of 1939. Puffing on his fat cigar and glowering in a
manner nobody had seen before, the diminutive mayor served notice on
McElroy to quit his post six days after the first indictment of Boss Pen-
dergast. The Judge put on his hat at a rakish angle and took his bean-pole
figure out of the City Hall with great dignity shortly before the lunch
hour of April 13, leaving behind a piece of paper which said simply: "I
hereby tender my resignation as city manager, H. . McElroy."

The resignation was dated the day before the mayor staged his success-
ful coup against the man who had humiliated him for eight years.
Smith's action was made with the explanation that he had decided to step
beyond the powers granted the mayor by the nonpartisan charter, to
preserve order and peace in the town during the interim period between
the Pendergast blowup and the reorganization of the city government.
Almost everyone was surprised by this sudden show of energy on Mayor
Smith's part and the ease with which he seized control from McElroy. It
was never explained whether Mr. Smith originated this move all by
himself, but if he did he is entitled to credit for more political initiative
than he is commonly allowed. It was a well-timed maneuver, coming be-
fore anybody besides Mr. Smith had a chance to recover from the excite-
ment of the last few days. The new regime started with the majority of
the Council supporting the mayor and a vast majority of the population
wishing him good luck.

The Mayor seemed to feel that his sudden elevation to the front office
had changed everything.

332 TOM'S TOWN

"Kansas City is clean now and is going to stay clean, 9 * he proclaimed in
a statement to the press.

Reached at his home by telephone and asked to comment, McElroy
said: "I am as cool as a cucumber but I am saying nothing, not a thing."
It was his last word to the people he had managed for thirteen years.

In the days and weeks that followed, it was difficult at times to follow
the direction of the Bryce Smith reform and make out who was running
the mayor. The trouble was not caused by lack of earnest effort and good
will on the part of Mr, Smith. He was naturally such an amiable in-
dividual that he wanted to please everybody, with the exception of Gov-
ernor Stark and a few extremist ministers and the Republicans. He
welcomed the advice and co-operation of the Star and the leading busi-
nessmen, and he let his friends and associates in the organization know
that he had their interests at heart. The result was that half the time
Mayor Smith appeared to be carrying on a reform and the rest of the
time it was clear that his administration was working to save the rem-
nants of the Democratic organization.

In order to keep the reins in his own hands and still observe the charter
provisions that limited the mayor's authority to that of president pro
tempore of the City Council, Mr. Smith picked a city manager he could
trust. His choice was Eugene C. Zachman, Mr. Smith's secretary. Mr.
Zachman was a handsome young man who wore his clothes stylishly, and
the businessmen and politicians regarded him glumly at first. Outside
of his association with Mayor Smith, his only known preparation for his
difficult new role had been obtained as a newspaperman when he was a
reporter for the Kansas City Journal-Post. Everyone was surprised at the
taknt which Mr. Zachman displayed in administrative work and the
political life.

The team of Smith and Zachman made many changes in the City
Hall, reducing expenses, cutting the payroll, ordering an audit, shifting
personnel, firing some department heads, reorganizing here and there
and getting more efficiency on all sides. In the first few months of the
Smith regime, eight important department heads all of them pillars o
the machine organization were removed from office, a process that was
hastened somewhat by the urging of a businessmen's committee and the
action of the courts.

PAY-OFF 333

Chief pressure on the reform mayor came from a formidable group
of self-appointed advisers known as the Forward Kansas City Com-
mittee. This outfit was dominated by influential bankers, realtors and
manufacturers who had been conspicuous in the latter-day opposition to
the machine. Their Forward Kansas City Committee drew up an elabo-
rate program that Mayor Smith was expected to follow. The Committee
closely checked every move of the city administration and was quick to
issue critical statements when things didn't go forward fast enough to
suit the leading citizens. The businessmen's "ideal city manager" had
turned sour on them in the experiment with party machine government
and they made sure that the reform would turn out to their liking.

Mayor Smith's moves were neither eager nor extensive enough to
satisfy all the Forward men but the main criticism of the interim govern-
ment at first came from outside the business circle. The ministers of the
old Mayerberg Charter League movement wanted more action. Governor
Stark, in the state capital, exhibited no confidence whatever in the Smith
crusade. The Governor was about to present Kansas City with another
major reform measure in the form of a new law that ended Home Rule
for the police. He roared at Smith when the Mayor and his new city
manager went to JeflEerson City to lobby against the police bill

"It may surprise some of my listeners to learn that Kansas City has a
mayor," Stark said. "That fact has corne to light in recent weeks in a most
peculiar manner. It is an adequate measure of the desperate straits in
which the Pendergast organization finds itself that it feels impelled to
produce this hitherto obscure gentleman and push him to the front with
the sign Civic Virtue pinned to his coattails."

The police bill was rushed through the Legislature, with Stark's follow-
ing mustering the votes to overwhelm the organization die-hards, and
Home Rule for Kansas City ended in July, 1939. Imbued with the Stark
crusading zeal, the new Police Board appointed by the Governor looked
far and wide for a fanatic in law enforcement and found their man in
the extraordinary Lear B. Reed, G-man; and with his selection as police
chief the reform started toward an extreme which confounded even
some of the rabid agitators for a change.

Meanwhile, public sentiment for a complete change at the City Hall <
was kept alive by disclosure of various details of the Country B&ok-

334 TOM'S TOWN

keeping system which McElroy had operated with no interference from
the City Council or the Ten-Year-Bond advisory committee. In nine
years, twenty-six millions of the thirty-three million Ten-Year bonds had
been sold, a large part of this money being spent without competitive
bidding for contracts and a substantial share of the business going to the
Pendergast companies.

The city entered 1939 with an admitted deficit of $1,500,000 in thfe
general operating fund, and city employees were informed there was
nothing in the till to cover their salaries for the last four months of the
fiscal year.

One of the interesting items turned up in the investigations was an
estimate of the size of "Cut and Lug," as the citizens called the system
that was used to spread the expense of machine government among the
small fry in the ranks. The Cut was a kickback from Gity Hall salaries,
which varied from twenty-five to fifty per cent a month through several
months of each year, depending on how much the city administration
needed in order to make ends meet. This cut was imposed without
Council authorization or ordinance, and the Country Bookkeeper got
around that charter requirement by having employees sign slips of paper
requesting the reduction in pay, with the understanding that the amount
withheld was to be repaid later when the city was again in clover, which
it never was so long as McElroy was in the City Hall. In addition to these
special pay cuts, the city employees had taken a twenty per cent reduc-
tion in base pay by Council ordinance in 1933. The Lug was the assess-
ment placed on the pay of city and county employees to raise campaign
funds for the party, and this collection grew in size each year until it was
admitted to have exceeded $200,000 in 1938, but may have been double
that figure, as a full accounting was never made. Cut and Lug be-
tween them were estimated to have taken more than ten million dollars
from the rank-and-file over a decade.

Total amount squandered and illegally diverted through the long
period of machine rule was beyond computation btit when the various
audits and investigations were completed, t^je bill included these items:

A deficit of $19,453,976 in claims and accounft.

Funds for retirement of $11,000,000 water sinking-fund bonds due
July i, 1942, unlawfully diverted to other purposes.

5. /. Ray in The Kansas City Star

The Atk Springs Another Leak

The "water leak," discovered in 1939, was a bookkeeping operation that cost the
city $356,060.

336 TOM'S TOWN

Expenditure of $11,445,009 from Ten-Year-Bond funds without con-
tracts as required by law.

Operating fund deficit of $2,733,185.

Diversion of $3,263,623 of improvement bond money to pay wages of
city employees.

Unrecorded liabilities of $1,200,000.

An additional sum of $2,692,126 diverted to unauthorized uses.

The boss regime also left a large bill for back pay of city employees
and the succeeding administration found that claims and judgments in
this account totaled $6,825,250.

It was estimated that the delinquent tax bill totaled another ten million
dollars and the size of the tax favoritism racket was suggested by the
report that tax abatements in 1938 totaled $684,005.

Money squandered by the device of payroll padding was beyond cal-
culation. When Mayor Smith opened the records, it was found that the
number on the city payroll was 5,200 against the 3,200 or 3,500 indicated
by McElroy. The Smith regime immediately dropped 700, but the search
for the pads was still incomplete.

In the final count, total number of city employees was put at 6,500
(as against the 3,500 currently -on the city payroll) and many of these
did no work other than cash their checks.

One o the more sensational items turned up in the City Hall investi-
gation was the big "water leak." This was an arrangement by which
the Rathford Engineering Company was paid five thousand dollars
a month to look for water leaks > a service that required hardly any
effort outside of the bookkeeping but took $356,500 of the taxpayers*
money over a period of years. Rathford was the front in this business for
Boyle and Pryor. Rathford performed most of the easy labor required in
looking for leaks and most of the money went to Pendergast's associates.
One of Rathf ord's assistants for a time was W. E. Burnett, Jr., son-in-law
of Pendergast. McElroy and Pryor were indicted on conspiracy to de-
fraud charges. Pryor, the only one brought to trial, was acquitted but he
and the Boyle estate later paid back $40,000 in a settlement with the city.

A mystery that intrigued the public's fancy throughout the spring and
sai&mer was the McElroy emergency fund. This was the prime exhibit
kt'Sam Country Bookkeeping system, the fund he invented to have cash

PAY-OFF 337

on hand at all times. Several unsuccessful efforts were made to force
McElroy to surrender his records on the handling of this fund, but he
was preoccupied with a more important judgment than the one his
successors were preparing.

The auditor's report established that the emergency fund amounted to
$5,843,643.56 over a period of seven and one-half years. It was assembled
by ignoring the charter regulations to draw on the Ten-Year Bond
money, the city treasurer and the funds of other departments. The report
showed that nearly four million dollars was returned to sources which
had made the advances and the remainder covered a wide variety of
payments to people and corporations with claims against the city.

McElroy was dying when the Smith reform reached a crisis in Sep-
tember. A recall movement, started by various individuals and groups,
grew to the dimensions where it couldn't be controlled by the conserva-
tive members of the Forward Kansas City Committee. Mayor Smith,
who had promised to resign if recall petitions were signed by as many as
forty thousand citizens, suffered a lapse of memory on this point. He
angered the Forward men by his failure to restrain organization stal-
warts in the City Hall who took elaborate measures to discourage and
obstruct the recall movement. A break between the committee and Smith
was imminent on September 15, when Judge McElroy died at the age of
seventy-four, after weeks of illness from eye trouble and heart disease.
At the time that death released him from the struggle he faced indict-
ments in the water leak deal and was under Federal investigation on his
income tax account.

The battle for control of -the City Hall did not pause while the Judge
was being buried. Mayor Smith broke with the Forward Committee late
in September and the main battle shifted to recall and to a fight for
control of the city manager's post for the remainder of the interim period.

Mayor Smith was caught in a crossfire in the final stages of the con-
test. The Forward Committee turned against him because of the Demo-
cratic maneuvers to block the recall movement. The recall campaign
struck a bump when three Councilmen resigned and the Council elected
their successors, who were not subject to recall for six months under the
law and who could not easily be charged with responsibility foj the
McElroy administration, in any case. A further complication was pro

338 TOM'S TOWN

vided by the city clerk, who played a game of hide-and-seek with the
recall petitions and employed other devices to delay or prevent the
recall election.

While the Forward Committee assailed Smith over these tactics, cer-
tain organization leaders found that the Mayor was growing too inde-
pendent and this difference inside the Democratic Party reached a
climax over two important offices in the City Hall. The office of city
manager was vacated when Smith's man, Zachman, evidently sensing
the approaching showdown, resigned to take the post of director of the
Municipal Auditorium. Then Sam C. Blair stepped out of the office
of city counselor. Blair, a young man who had distinguished himself
as one of District Attorney Milligan's brilliant assistants in the vote-
fraud cases, had taken the city counselor's office soon after Smith seized
McEIroy's powers. A Democrat from Cole County, he seemed happy
to remove himself from the Kansas City imbroglio when Governor Stark
appointed him to a circuit judgeship.

In the competition over these two offices, Mayor Smith gave perhaps
his outstanding exhibition of independence. He succeeded in getting
the Council to appoint a temporary city manager of his choice, J. V,
Lewis. Meanwhile, he conducted a vigorous agitation for employment of
a trained municipal administrator from out of town. His selection was
L, P. Cookingham, the expert who became the city manager of the
highly successful administration that was established in 1940, and who
still holds that office. But Mayor Smith was too advanced in this matter
for the Democratic powers in 1939. They wanted to keep the city
managership in the hands of one of their faithful followers and the
result^ was an action which Mayor Smith denounced as a double-cross
engineered by members of the Council who had been the first to call
on him to save the administration after the McElroy retirement.

Working behind the Mayor's back, leaders of the Goat and Rabbit
factions got five-to-four control of the City Council and selected William
M. Drennon, retired insurance executive and a friend of the late H. F.
McElroy, to be city manager. Bryce Smith rebelled and his last effort to
outwit the opposition produced a comic opera scene in the City Hall.
The Mayor hurried to put an independent man in the city counselor's
office before the Drennon regime could take over. Smith's choice for this

PAY-OFF 339

post was Jerome Walsh, son of the late Frank P. Walsh, and he had retir-
ing City Manager Lewis appoint Walsh before incoming City Manager
Drennon was sworn in. Walsh was in the mayor's office waiting to take
the oath, but the ceremony was held up by a suspicious sort of delay in
transmitting the commission from the city clerk's office. Then the door
opened to admit Councilmen Garrett and Clark and Mr. Drennon.
Informed that Mr. Walsh was about to be sworn in as city counselor,
Councilman Garrett bellowed:

"Who appointed him?"

"The city manager, Mr. Lewis," Smith replied.

"Well," Garrett roared again, "Mr. Lewis is not city manager. Mr.
Drennon is the city manager."

The boss majority on the Council had sworn him in twenty-five
minutes earlier.

Jerry Walsh snorted:

"Here goes the city counselor with the shortest record in the history of
Kansas City."

Resigning in protest, Mayor Smith stepped out of office at the year's
end with a statement reviewing the achievements of his administration
in the last eight months. It was a list of thirty-one points, all of them
covering important improvements. The Smith farewell in politics was
climaxed by an ovation which he received when he appeared at the
annual Fathers-and-Sons* luncheon of Rotary, Taking the bows and
smiling happily, the little mayor showed that he had emerged from the
battle with his amiable disposition intact. *Tve kept my sense of humor
and that's a big help," he said.

The Drennon maneuver came too late to save the machine, for by this
time the recall movement had cleared the road for the final drive. Ob-
structed by illegal interference with recall petitions against individual
members of the council, the reform groups decided to seek an amend-
ment of the charter which would shorten the terms of the councilmen
from four to two years. This amendment would bring an election early
in 1940, at which the citizens could vote to change the entire administra-
tion. The charter amendment election was set for February 13 and its
approval was confidently forecast. There remained on the calendar only
one more tragic occurrence before the next test at the polls.

34 o TOM'S TOWN

MARY'S ANSWER

IT WAS LEFT to Mary McElroy to say the last word for the Judge. Late in
June of 1939, when she was guarding her father from interviewers and
investigators while he lay ill, this comment was attributed to Miss
McElroy in an item printed in the Star:

You know that during the last few years unusual conditions have prevailed
and emergencies have arisen that had to be met. Dad's nature is to meet, not
dodge, any situation.

He has done certain things that, technically, can be criticized but he has not
done anything that is economically unsound or ethically wrong. All of this
will be made clear to the people of Kansas City. In the meantime my greatest
concern is for my father's health.

The things that Mary saw in the Judge's vindication have never been
made entirely clear but Mary was, none the less, a most eloquent witness
for the Judge and her story is remembered whenever there is talk of
H. F. McElroy, his work and his time.

Mary McElroy was thirty-one years old in the summer of 1939 when
she watched over her father at St. Mary's Hospital, where he went for an
operation to remove a cataract from one eye, and at their home at 21 West
Fifty-seventh Street, where he lived in a wheel-chair and in bed until his
death in September of that year. Miss McElroy had been watching over
the Judge throughout most of his thirteen years as city manager. The
popular notion was that she was so often in the Judge's company because
he wanted to keep her close under his eyes, but the fact is that Mary was
as much responsible for this arrangement as her father.

McElroy had two children Mary and her brother, Henry. The illness
and death of their mother placed upon the father the full responsibility
for their rearing, and he discharged this task with a rare devotion. Mary
was his favorite, his special concern. When she entered young woman-
hood, Mary made the widowed Judge her exclusive responsibility. McEl-
roy- was an indulgent father who allowed his children wide personal
freedom. He encouraged Mary to engage in activities, outside the home,
but she never strayed far or long. She was the Judge's persistent shadow*
She went -with him to the City Hall to observe Council meetings and

PAY-OFF 341

followed him when he traveled about town on official business. She
stood beside him at dedication ceremonies and when he welcomed im-
portant visitors to Kansas City. Her pictures appeared in the newspapers
in countless poses at affairs graced by the presence of the City Manager
and his' daughter. They walked together on Sunday morning strolls,
chatting happily and smiling on passersby, some o whom were startled
by this rare view of the testy City Manager.

Mary McElroy seemed unsure of herself and never entirely happy
when she was out of her father's company. She was a tall, big-boned and
rangy girl whose most conspicuous features were her large, generous
mouth and her wide, haunted eyes. She had little of her father's arro-
gance and seemed to be shy and self-conscious even when she was putting
on airs. She tried hard to be smart and gay but the pose was painful. She
wore brigfct colors, decorative jewelry, big hats and the newest extremes
in style but her plainness was always evident. ,

The Judge taught Mary to be proud, independent, self-reliant. One of
his favorite stories was of the time he let her travel alone to Chicago
when she was a young girl. In her excitement she left her purse behind
and when the train was under way she discovered that she had no ticket
and only twenty-five cents in change. She efficiently explained the situa-
tion to the conductor and had him telegraph her father to make the
proper arrangements. Arriving in Chicago, she sent her father a^ gay
message telling him she had more fun riding without a ticket than she
would have had if she had one. When Mary finished high school the
Judge sent her to a college for girls at Rockf ord, Illinois, where she exhib-
ited the McElroy f orcef ulness by getting herself elected president of the
student body. Her father was elated when he heard that she had chal-
lenged the college authorities with her defense of a girl who was about
to be expelled for infraction of the rules.

Mary's pride and self-reliance drew their strength from her intense
regard for her father, whom she called Old Boy. The few things that
she did to win distinction and impress her personality on others were
things that accorded with her conception of what was required of Judge
McElroy's daughter. *

Mary took huge amusement in the tales of the Old Boy's crotchets and
tempers and was not disturbed by the popular impression that he was

3<p TOM'S TOWN

mean, vindictive and tyrannical. She saw that his enemies exploited the
incidents when he cracked heads and called names. They remembered
the time when he sent a cut-glass bottle full of castor oil to the Republican
Police Board in response to a plea for the policemen's wages; when he
built a spite fence against a restaurant on Twelfth Street that defied his
order to vacate the property for a public project; when he butted a slow
automobile in traffic; when he refused to repair the paving on Wornall
Road for property owners who wouldn't pay for a new concrete slab
he wanted to build; when he harassed J. C. Nichols and the South Siders
who obstructed his building program. They didn't talk about the
McElroy who stopped his car in traffic downtown to help an old beggar
woman across the street, who maintained a soup kitchen on the North
Side and gave handouts to many obscure callers at the City Hall, or if
they mentioned these things they spoke of them derisively as cheap ges-
tures for political favor. It was easy for a loyal daughter of the City
Manager to feel that he was a deliberately misunderstood and unappre-
ciated man. She never doubted that the heads he cracked needed crack-
ing, and no one exhibited more appreciation of the exuberant perform-
ance he gave in carrying out the work he was so admirably designed for.

The idea that the Judge was the City Council's Hired Man was a
great joke to the McElroys. Their attitude was shown in humorous
fashion at the inauguration of 1938 when the Judge was elected city
manager for the last time. His name was put in nomination and the
Old Boy took the floor to give his acceptance speech, and then paused
when he realized that no seconding motion had yet been made and no
vote taken. Mary McElroy's soprano was the merriest sound in the gale
of laughter that greeted this faux pas.

This scene at the City Hall typified the relationship that existed be-
tween father and daughter but beneath the girl's acceptance of domina-
tion by the powerful individuality of her parent there was a clash of wills,
interests and purposes that found expression in Mary's growing restless-
ness and finally produced a crisis in the bizarre episode of the Mary
McElroy kidnaping in May, 1933. That affair had lasting consequences
for both of the McElroys but the crime and the chase and capture that
followed produced so much excitement that the public obtainecf only a
confused impression o the main effect. The abduction was a matter of

PAY-OFF 343

political moment, for it demonstrated the inability of the machine to
discipline the underworld through Home Rule, but its significance in
that respect was entirely secondary. In retrospect, the chief interest
is in the mood and spirit of the time as reflected so fantastically in this
case. For the people as a whole, it was a vast crime sensation played out
in the manner of a B movie. The majority accepted it as an Adventure
and a Romance, involving the Judge's daughter and one of her abductors.
Only a few saw it as a personal tragedy and a social catastrophe, which
it was. '

The romantic implications were based on Miss McElroy's successful
efforts to save the leader of the kidnap band from hanging and on her
frequent visits to prison to call on three of the men who held her captive
for thirty hours on May 27 and 28, 1933. Inevitably the popular mind
concluded that this interest betokened Love and this legend persisted
until it was included in a book which appeared in 1945 under the name
of Alan Hynd. That volume, entitled The Giant Killers, contained .a
collection of stories on the exploits of the intelligence men of the Treas-
ury in running down criminals and corrupt politicians. The chapter on
Kansas City, called "Dark Metropolis," carried a brief account of the
McElroy kidnaping which was notable for the author's interpretation of
the love motif. Mr. Hynd went the whole way, even quoting Miss McEl-
roy in a theatrical speech to her father declaring her love for the fascinat-
ing bandit chief. Since both of the McElroys were dead by this time, the
reader must be grateful to Mr, Hynd for finally revealing a secret which
the family divulged to no one else.

Mary McElroy frankly discussed the love rumor with intimate friends,
and always insisted it was preposterous. Her disclaimer is good enough
for the writer of the present account, who has no disposition to settle the
burning love question.

In fairness to the romantic school of crime writers, it must be ad-
mitted that the kidnaping was a very unorthodox operation. It had some
of the aspects of a game and the victim and her captors established a
spirit of camaraderie almost from the beginning. After her first moment
of fright, Miss McElroy played her part in a lighthearted manner that
disarmed the kidnapers and made them her partisans. There were four
men in the gang but two of them remained in their hideaway while the

344 TOM'S TOWN

actual abduction was managed by the others, Walter McGec and
Clarence Stevens, who gained entrance to the home by posing as delivery-
men with a package for Judge McElroy 's "little girl." They did not know
that she was a big girl of twenty-five, and they hadn't planned to kidnap
her until shortly before they invaded the home. Mary's brother, Henry,
was originally their intended victim. They waited outside the home for
him to appear. After a kmg watch, they concluded they had missed him
and abruptly decided to take his sister instead, and supposed they were
dealing with a child.

McGee's deliveryman trick deceived the McElroy cook, Heda Christen-
sen, into opening the front door for him. He produced a revolver, an-
nounced his mission, and he and Stevens forced Heda Christensen to
show them the way upstairs where Miss Elroy was taking a bath. She
screamed after she first heard their command but quickly recovered
her poise, put on her bath robe and opened the door to face the men
calmly. She asked permission to dress in privacy and the kidnapers
stood guard outside her room while she dressed in a becoming pink
cotton frock, tan hose and white summer shoes* She put on a hat, picked
up a pair of gloves and a purse containing seven dollars, and walked
from the house with her strange escort. The kidnapers left a message for
Judge McElroy with Heda Christensen, notifying him that they would
get in touch with him by telephone to arrange ransom negotiations.
Their price was sixty thousand dollars, later reduced to thirty thousand
dollars.

Seating Miss McElroy on the floor of the rear of their car, the kidnapers
drove across the Kansas line to a hideout' near Shawnee, less than ten
miles from the McElroy home, Mary was chained to the wall of the
room in which she was held, with a handcuff on her left wrist. Then
she began to get acquainted with the four men who kidnaped her Wal-
ter McGee, twenty-eight years old, leader of the band, his younger
brother, George McGee, Clarence Click and Clarence Stevens. She had
talked with Walter McGee and Stevens on the drive to the hideout
and she found herself among an attentive and talkative company in the
house near Shawnee. They brought her clean sheets, an electric light and
a radio. They apologized for the service and the food, whidx they brought

PAY-OFF 345

her on a large tray. Her prison was a basement garage in a small frame
dwelling.

The men called her Mary and she noticed that they had good faces.
They smoked cigarettes constantly and drank some in her presence, but
their manner was deferential and friendly.

"It would be foolish to say that I felt no fear at all," Mary explained
after she was released. "At the same time I felt sure that any one of the
four men I saw would have been ready to protect me against any other
person or danger. It is because I know that and felt that they were not
bad at heart that I would hate to see them sent to the penitentiary. I
would fight to keep them from such a fate."

Miss McElroy gave police and reporters a detailed account of her ex-
perience, an account that is striking for its revelation of the affinity that
immediately developed between the lonely girl from a sheltered home
and four men at loose ends five people who found a common bond of
sympathy in the oddity of their lives and this strange situation.

"We talked a good deal," Mary explained. " 'I suppose you hate us,' said
the dark one. I told him I felt no malice at all toward them, and under-
stood perfectly how they felt. I really can see their side of it, you know,
I even told them I might have done the same thing.

"We talked about prison reform for one thing. One of them told me
he was sorry he hadn't finished his medical course. I was sorry, too.

"They told me they could recommend me as a kidnaping subject and
before I left they asked me to suggest some prospects for kidnaping.
They didn't say which they preferred, men or women. No, I didn't give
them any."

The men did some swaggering and boasting to show they were pro-
fessionals, speaking of the Lindbergh kidnaping as a crank case. The
gang leader, Walter McGee the one who was supposed to have made
Miss McElroy's heart flutter impressed her more with his considerate
manners than his swashbuckling charm. Time and circumstances did
not permit him to exhibit the romantic attraction which is indicated in
his police record. His divorced wife informed authorities that he had won
her with his fierceness. When she resisted his advances, he seized her.
and held a razor blade to her throat and she knew then that it was a case
o true love.

346 TOM'S TOWN

In her conversation and statements covering the experience, Mary
referred oftener to George McGee than his dynamic brother. George was
her guard in the room. She listened sympathetically to the tale of his
interrupted medical studies and called him Doctor.

The prisoner had trouble going to sleep in her dungeon. At midnight
she sat on her cot listening to the radio which brought in the voice of a
girl singing "The End of a Perfect Day/* That sweet elegy was followed
by a new hit number, "You'll Never Get to Heaven That Way," repeated
four times-
She fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning and was awakened at
nine o'clock and told to prepare for her release, which followed the pay-
ment of thirty thousand dollars ransom* Mary was set free near the en-
trance of the Milburn Golf Club early in the afternoon of Sunday. She
waved goodbye to her friends of the strange Saturday adventure, then
walked resolutely to the clubhouse where she identified herself and
waited until her father and brother arrived in a motor car for her.

The kidnapers, unaware that she had money in her purse, had given
her one dollar to pay her way home. "I forgot to ask them for an address
to send the change to," she quipped to a Star reporter who interviewed
her at her home. A large crowd was waiting at the home, overflowing
the yard, and her first comment upon her return was: "If the kidnaping
brought all my friends together, it was worth the results."

Three of the kidnapers were quickly rounded up in the furious hunt
that followed. Clarence Stevens, who aided Walter McGee in the actual
abduction and ransom collection, got away. Quick and hard justice was
dealt out to the other three. A muffler was placed on Mary's pleas for the
men and everything done to expedite the prosecution, for the organiza-
tion, the state and the press were after blood. Judge McElroy overcame
his daughter's resistance and she went obediently to the stand to tell her
story quietly. She was a grave, hollow-eyed figure in the courtroom, a
young woman obviously working under a great strain to do what had
been impressed up^n her as her duty.

Clarence Click, on whose farm she was held a prisoner, was given an
eight-year sentence, George McGee, the dark one who wanted to be a
doctor, drew a life term in prison. Walter McGee, the dariag and con-

PAY-OFF 347

siderate one, was sentenced to death. It was the first time that this ex-
treme penalty had been assessed for kidnaping in the United States.

The Judge took Mary on a trip to the West Coast for a vacation and
returned with the report that she was greatly improved by the change of
scenery. He took her to Europe and they had a grand time together. In
Rome, the City Manager complained to the authorities about the racket
made by horn-tooting motor car drivers and Mussolini's celebrated decree
against careless or excessive honking was said to have resulted from the
McElroy protest. In Ireland, where he visited the home scenes of his
parents, the Judge told De Valera how he ran American municipal gov-
ernment efficiently. In Dublin, he and Mary were guests at a ceremony
arranged by the Lord Mayor. They returned looking refreshed. Mary
wore a black shirt and gave the Fascist salute.

At home, other diversions and more trips were arranged for Mary, but
she fell into dark moods that alarmed her father. He complained bitterly
that the kidnaping had ruined her health but it wasn't her treatment
at the hands of the bandits that troubled her. She visited the condemned
men in their cells and returned to her father in agitation over the course
that the law had taken. When the sentence was upheld in the Supreme
Court and the time for Walter McGee's execution approached, her brood-
ing became more intense and brought her to open revolt against the
Judge.

She disappeared from her home the night of February 10, 1935, im-
mediately after telling her father good night. She was missed fifteen
minutes later but was not found until shortly before noon the next day,
when she was taken from a bus at Normal, Illinois. She had boarded a
bus at Kansas City with a ticket, twenty cents and a tin of cigarettes,
wearing a long fur coat, a smart black hat, gray blouse and long black
skirt. She was traced from Springfield, Illinois, where she sent a tele-
gram to her father, saying: "Sorry, but am so frightened. Don't know
what I am doing."

Mary returned to Kansas City by plane, accompanied by an uncle.
One of her companions in the plane was Conwell Carlson, a Star reporter
and a personal friend of Miss McElroy's, She talked to him as an old and
trusted acquaintance and the story he wrote of their conversation in the

348 TOM'S TOWN

clouds was the most moving and illuminating piece of reporting on the
McElroy affair in this period*

Why had she made this wild flight?

"To get away," she said. "Not to have to see people and face people
who know me as the City Manager's daughter and the girl who was
kidnaped by a man who now faces a death sentence, and by two other
men sentenced to prison. I guess that was the reason, or at least part of
the reason. Did you ever feel as if you just couldn't stand it a minute
longer and must do something or go somewhere?"

Mary talked for a few moments with interest about her trip to Europe
the previous fall with her father, and the places and things she enjoyed
seeing in Italy and England. Yes, that was nice, she told Carlson. She
could forget a lot of things there for a while, for a few hours or days. But
then the old thoughts came back*

"It was my testimony," she said, "that convicted those men. It was the
right thing to do. Their sentences were just and I still believe capital pun-
ishment is merited for kidnaping as well as murder. Yet I came to know
the McGee brothers and Clarence Click in a sort of way. We talked and
kidded together when I was held prisoner. I decided to deal with the
situation realistically, then make the best I could of it. I hold no per-
sonal hard feelings against them, and I am sure today that they do not
hold hard feelings against me. That's what makes the situation all the
worse, I have nightmares about those men and the fates they brought on
themselves. I was a part of the drama that fixed their destiny."

She was silent a moment and hesitated before answering the next
question*

"Have I seen them since the trials? Do I try to forget them? Yes, I
have seen them, and no, I cannot forget them. I have visited all of them in
person. I have tried to help their relatives. Something drives me to do
this. I cannot let them go."

Describing the scene in the plane, Carlson wrote that Miss McElroy
turned to look out the plane window, watching the first star appear in
die sky that was so blue and cold above the fleecy carpet of clouds. "This
wa$ fairyland up here. Yet Mary was curiously unmoved by it. Her
thoughts were still on the men in the cclfa."

PAY-OFF 349

Miss McElroy lighted a cigarette, took a few puffs, smiled wanly, and
continued:

"We seem to want to live our own lives. Why should I feel boxed up
and so useless when there are so many things I might do? I want to be
just Mary McElroy, an ordinary girl, and yet here I am attracting more
attention to myself by a foolish stunt like this.

"I can't get away from a feeling for the underdog. Did you know that
George McGee is taking a high school correspondence course in prison?
He's a hotheaded boy but he wasn't the leader of the kidnapers. He once
hoped to study medicine, he told me. There was a time, a short time, in
Leavenworth, when George was on top. He lived there, you know, but
now the poor fellow is way at the bottom of the heap."

When Mary alighted from the plane, pallid and weary, she saw her
father and walked quickly to him. They were both under restraint. "Did
you have a good flight?" he asked. "Oke doke," said Mary.

The Judge surrendered then. Two months later he went with Mary to
Jefferson City to ask that the life of Walter McGee be spared. The Judge
and his daughter were guests of Governor Park at luncheon in the execu-
tive mansion. McElroy told the Governor that he believed the law had
been vindicated and the execution of McGee would cause Mary more
suffering. Miss McElroy stated the case more eloquently in her formal
appeal.

"In pleading for Walter McGee's life, I am pleading for rny own peace
of mind," her statement said.

"Through punishing a guilty man, his victim will be made to suffer
equally. He would even have this advantage: He would not have to think
about his execution afterwards.

"I do not forget the suffering this has brought in many ways to many
people. Walter McGee's death will not erase nor ease the suffering.
Rather, I believe the mercy shown him, and the feeling of warmth and
hope any act of mercy brings, will serve as a balm to us all."

Miss McElroy argued that McGee's trial was "primarily important as
a test case," in which "the State of Missouri was trying to prove the pos-
sibility of giving the death sentence for kidnaping. The sentence passed
by the jury has been confirmed by the Supreme Court. I believe that the
full force of the law has been emphasized and that it is clear that Walter

35 o TOM'S TOWN

McGee has no legal means of escaping the gallows. I hope and believe
that this has served to warn men like him that kidnaping is a serious and
dangerous crime to contemplate."

Governor Park commuted the sentence to life in prison with the
declaration that justice should be equal, a principle that had carried less
weight with the politicians a few years earlier when Rabbi Mayerberg
tried to save the life of Joe Hershon.

Miss McElroy recovered rapidly in both health and spirits, though she
was a much more serious young woman than she had been before. She
set herself to the task of working for the welfare of her friends in prison,
visiting them, sending them gifts, arranging correspondence school
studies for them, and planning for the job that Clarence Click would
get when he left prison. She did this unostentatiously, trying to avoid at-
tention, but not going aboutit secretly or apologetically. Once when a re-
porter questioned her about this work, she said:

"I am not trying to be benevolent. That's such a lofty word. Anyway,
it doesn't fit at all. In fact, I am not sure exactly what I arn trying to do.
I only know I want to help those McGee boys find themselves."

Mary's interest in reform did not extend beyond her efforts to improve
the convicts' minds and their opinions of society. Friends who discussed
politics with her found her very emphatic in rejecting the suggestion
that she entertained any serious criticism of the existing political system
and social order. She was thoroughly versed in the conventional argu-
ment of the organization and she was a good talker, speaking with the
Judge's bluntness and some of his wit. She seemed to have no doubts
that the boss system was inevitable and the best thing all around, men
and institutions being what they were. If Pendergast didn't exist, some
other boss would be in his place, perhaps a much less efficient boss than
Pendergast.

It all seemed very simple to her, yet she was deeply troubled and she
grew increasingly sensitive to the criticism heaped on her father. Al-
though she effected casualness in discussing the evils of machine govern-
ment, admitting that many things were wrong, she. called them neces-
sary evils and became very vigorous in her answers if anyone indicated
any reservations on her father's personal integrity. Her three articles of

PAY-OFF 351

faith were the Old Boy's honesty, efficiency and vision. She regarded all
the building achievements in the Ten-Year-Bond Program as his par-
ticular feats. The massive six-million-dollar Municipal Auditorium was
his monument for the ages.

^Mary grew enthusiastic in discussing her father's work to bring the
air age to Kansas City and she herself took a hand in the work of making
the town air-minded in the period when the municipal air terminal was
being developed at Kawsmouth. Some aviation experts complained that
the airport site, in the great bend of the Big Muddy where it has its con-
fluence with Kaw, was inadequate as to size and exposed pilots to un-
necessary hazards of wind currents and fogs. Other critics protested at
the price paid for the land. McElroy ignored all opposition and bulled it
through. Perhaps the critics were right but at least two classes of citizens
travelers and rubbernecks benefited from the McElroy vision or ob-
stinacy. The site he selected places the arriving or departing air passenger
within five minutes' ride from the heart of downtown Kansas City. It
gives loafers and kibitzers of Kansas City a magnificent daily spectacle
to watch.

The best place to watch the airport, and the whole West Bottoms
show for that matter, is from the crest of West Bluff, or Quality Hill.
Here too the McElroy enterprise is in evidence. One of the last things he
did was to arrange for a lookout point, with parking accommodations
for numerous cars and a parklike effect, at the highest point on Quality
Hill. He was not able to accomplish this without exhibiting some more
of the old McElroy temper. He got in a quarrel with a woman who
owned a home on the lookout site. She said it was worth more than five .
thousand dollars and Mac said he wouldn't pay much more than one
thousand dollars, for-values on Quality Hill have been sadly reduced in
the thirty years since Kansas City quality moved out south, leaving their
fine old red-brick houses to be occupied by a new class of people who are
accustomed to living with decay and ghosts. The quarrel over the house
went on for some time, holding up the project, until one day the owner
happened by and found the house was gone. It vanished just like that,
and no one knew where or why. Just another mystery of the machine
days.

However the injured house owner may feel about it, the sitters and

352 TOM'S TOWN

watchers get a lot of pleasure out of the civic improvement on her lot.
From the lookout they see one of the finest views of the might of in-
dustrial America offered anywhere in the land. Judge McElroy had a
particular feeling for this scene, which may explain his im patience with
the lady with the house and lot. It is said that he decided to make Kansas
City his home after sampling the view from Quality Hil 1 , for it com-
bines industrial and pastoral effects to a rare degree, cer.ai /to appeal to
any man who likes both land and machines. The construction of the
airport in the Missouri bend on the North Kansas City skl^ of the river
unquestionably added something to the view from the bluffs, where
people have been sitting for a century watching a large part of the his-
tory of the West roll by.

Mary had numerous instances like the airport deal to justify her faith
in her father as a doer, a builder, who resorted to ruthless tactics to get
things done for the town he loved. She completely accepted his business-
man's creed as the only realistic one for the time and place she was a
great realist, as were all the people she knew and respected. Her ather's
idea of social usefulness was having something to sell. His job was selling
boss government and, in his daughter's opinion, the results justified the
means. She gloried in the fact that he operated openly for the organiza-
tion. He was no hypocrite.

Not in so many words / but in essence, Mary said that the town was
corrupt, the machine vicious, everybody was on the make, life was mean
but the Old Boy was as straight as a string the only good man in a lousy
world.

Her sympathies were plainly with the oppressed and the misfit, but
she believed that the only practical way to help was through individual
kindness. She continued her work for the three men in prison in the few
years that remained of the McElroy regime after Walter McGee's life was
saved. This interest could not completely occupy her and she filled in the
time with civic activities, with work for the Philharmonic orchestra and
social doings. She attempted to join in the standard pleasures of the
period, going to cocktail parties, being seen in the night spots. She was
a solemn, detached figure in the crowds except in rare intervals o anima-
tion. She narrowed the circle of her intimates. She was seen frequently
with a male escort but seemed to be avoiding the company of women*

PAY-OFF 353

She had entered spinsterhood and there was no one man for her.

When the crash came and the Judge went home to die, Mary was his
nurse and constant companion. She politely but firmly turned away of-
ficials and newspapermen who wanted to bother him about records and
city affairs. She was seen outside the house infrequently. A month before
the Judge died, when the recall movement was gathering momentum, a
practical joker called at the McElroy home with a recall petition and
asked Mary to sign it. She invited him in, explained that she believed the
people were entitled to express their preference in this way, and signed
the paper.

After her father died, she took a trip to the South for rest and sunshine.
When she returned she looked tanned and fit but found loneliness and
unhappiness waiting for her. She seldom left the house except for er-
rands and for brief appearances among her father's old friends, when she
tried to show that she was not impressed or disturbed by the disclosures
that impeached the integrity of the Old Boy. Neighbors who caught
glimpses of her were startled by the misery in her face and eyes.

In January, 1940, she made an effort to shake off her depression. On
Saturday, January 20, she decided to have a few friends in for the evening.
The ones she called had made other arrangements and expressed their
regrets, Mary decided to have her party alone. She fixed herself a drink
and some food and sat down in the sunroom to read. It was a cold night,
with a moaning north wind bringing two below zero. Some time in the
early morning watch Mary got a pistol and shot herself. There was no
one else in the house except the maid, and Mary's body was not found
until late Sunday morning. The news of her death overshadowed for a
day the accounts of trials for various figures in the boss regime and
reports of progress in the campaign for the charter amendment election
three weeks away.

Perhaps no one knew more of the sickness and hollowness of her time,
and no one uttered a more anguished protest than the one contained in
this brief note she left:

My four kidnapers are probably the only people on earth who don't consider
me an utter fool.
You have your death penalty now so please give them a chance.

MARY McEuioY.

354 TOM'S TOWN

Vox POPULI

SINCE the Tom story entered its final period, various other types besides
politicians have been competing for attention. Preachers, club ladies,
businessmen, newspaper editors and collegians have stepped into the pic-
ture for brief but sometimes important appearances. There were others
representing different elements of the population. In fact, the agitation
was so widespread and profound that it produced a new political con-
sciousness in the whole population which may prove to be the most
significant long-range result of the disturbances of the 1930'$.

At intervals throughout this period, the citizens were reminded that
the Kansas City storm was not entirely a local phenomenon but rather
an acute manifestation of the universal disorder. They were, however,
fairly successful in discouraging agitators who sought to interest them
in broader reform than the suppression of Tom Pendergast.

A notable illustration of the attitude toward radicals in Kansas City's
upper circles was given in the case of Tom Benton, the celebrated mural-
ist, whose demonstration that art constitutes a threat to social stability
provided a long and exciting distraction in the final years of machine
rule. Thomas Hart Benton, a native Missourian, came to Kansas City to
make his home in 1935, after many years of wandering, including long
stays on the Left Bank of Paris and in New York's Greenwich Village.
He had associated with almost every known variety of revolutionary,
and although he quarreled bitterly with Communists, he boldly identi-
fied himself as a collectivist just before leaving New York to get ac-
quainted with the rugged individualists of the Kansas City Chamber of
Commerce.

Mr. Benton came to Kansas City to be head of the painting department
in the Kansas City Art Institute but he left the East partly because of a
political objection and returned to his home state with a political hope.
In an interview in St. Louis, on his way west, he said :

"I'm sick of New York. It's full of talking, radical intellectuals/ I say
talking because they never do anything else, This part of the country is
going to dominate the coming social change and I desire to be here to
see what happens, not just to hear about it. The Middle West is going to

PAY-OFF 355

dominate because you've got the manpower, the votes and you raise the
groceries for the remainder of the country."

Mr. Benton, son of a Missouri Democrat who had served in Congress,
obviously was eager for political action and he got it in the next two
years with the magnificent mural he painted on the walls of the Mis-
souri Capitol in Jefferson City, a commission for which the Democratic-
controlled General Assembly appropriated sixteen thousand dollars in an
unguarded moment.

The artist at this time was in his late forties, a pint-sized figure with a
large head, tousled hair, a weathered, seamed face that was shaped for
ribald laughter, and a squirrel-hunter's eyes. He had the spirit if not the
bulk of his illustrious grand-uncle and namesake, Missouri's first senator.
There is a legend that the Senator kept himself in fighting trim by
having his Negro servant curry or rub him down with a horse brush
every morning, and he stirred things up for a half-century and more
with his duels and debates. Artist Benton played the harmonica and
smiled often, but he agitated the Missourians with his brush, his pen
ancLhis voic^for hg b^j talent as a writer as wellas a) ____

i On the walls of the Missouri Capitol, in vivid colors, remarkable tech-
fnical detail and dynamic form, he painted the whole Missouri story as
it had never been presented before. Here was the Missouri of Daniel
Boone, the pony express, prairie schooner, stage coach and steamboat, ef
the turkey shoot and the courthouse square, of prairie and woodland.
/This was the Missouri of Mark Twain and Tom Pendergast, the border
jstate, Mother of the West, scene of constant commotion, strife and much
misery along with the adventure. Here were Huck Finn, Nigger Jim,
Jesse James and his boys in a train robbery, a plantation overseer whip-
ping a slave, an Indian being rooked by a white trader, brother mur-
derously pursuing brother in the border wars, the Mormons being driven
from Independence with fire and club by their intolerant neighbors. And
here was the Missouri of the cities, the brothels and the honky-tonks,
Frankie and Johnny, the industrial smokes rising from the Bottoms, the
hardf aced tradesmen, the figure of Boss Pendergast, in the foreground,
seated in a chair on a platform and next to him the rump of a prominent
local Babbitt.

The guardians of the sacred fiction that everything is lovely under the

356 TOM'S TOWN

established order traveled to the Capitol, took one look at the mural and
left in shudders. Former Senator James A. Reed gave it a hurried ex-
amination and said: "Now I am going home and pray for the soul of
Michelangelo." A demand arose that the mural be obliterated and Tom
Benton be fired from his post in the Art Institute. The fight reached its
height in Kansas City with a cleaning and dyeing man and a realtor,
Thomas Dods and Howard Huselton, leading, the opposition. These
veterans of the stereopticon school of art carried their campaign before
businessmen's associations, and Benton personally entered the argument,
making a forceful statement for an art that portrayed the true and im-
portant facts of life regardless of their effect on the political thinking of
the people. He did not bother to defend himself against the charge that
he was lacking in Missouri patriotism. He asserted that he had a large
interest but no vainglory in his native state. Asked to explain why he
painted Jesse James rather than General Pershing, both native Mis-
sourians,hesaid:

"In the development of Missouri, General Pershmg was not as im-
portant as an ordinary old bucksaw and my granduncle, Senator Benton,
was of less importance than a common Missouri mule."

Fresh fuel was added to the controversy after Realtor Huselton read
Beaton's newly published autobiography, An Artist in America. Wield-
ing a red pencil, Huselton underlined passages in the book which he
denounced as "sensual, gross, profane and vulgar," and this narrow
view of a rich piece of literature found wide support. The Art Institute
Board seriously considered Huselton's demand that it refuse to renew
Benton's contract in 1938, an action that was announced in the press but
later reversed.

But Tom Benton continued to irritate the important people with his
paintings, his talk and his ideas. His "Susanna and The Elders," ac-
dgimed by art critics, brought an outcry from the opponents of nudity.
South side tempers were ruffled by an incident at a Beaux Arts Ball
sponsored by the Institute, when Benton and two of his noted com-
patriots, Grant Wood of Iowa and John Steuart Curry of Ka'nsas, were
named as judges to select the prize-winning costupes. Under Tom's
guidance, they offended the dowagers* sense of pure art by awarding the
women's first prize to a harem dancer in a few green beads and the men's

PAY-OFF 357

first prize a case of whisky to a guy dressed in the lower half of a pair
of pajamas, representing a eunuch.

Benton brought the fight on himself to a head in 1941 with his agitation
against what he called the conventional or effete administration of art
museums. He provoked a crisis on a visit to New York City, when he
aired his views over a bottle while surrounded by appreciative newspaper-
men. They quoted him in interviews which provoked angry sounds
back in Kansas City. Mr. Benton declared he was opposed to art muse-
ums and wanted to sell his stuff to "saloons, bawdy houses, Kiwanis and
Rotary Clubs and Chambers of Commerce even women's clubs." He
described a typical museum as a graveyard run by "a pretty boy with
delicate wrists and a swing in his gait." The Art Institute Board decided
he had overstepped the bounds of propriety, Tom lost his job and his
students picketed in futile protest. He decided to Stay on in Kansas City
but the citizens thereafter heard little from him, and their conservative
leaders encouraged them to forget that one of the nation's foremost artists
and clearest social minds resided in their midst.

Another interesting disturber of the public peace in this period was
Dr. Logan Clendening, who represented both the medical and literary
professions. Unlike Artist Benton, he was not an agitator by nature and
he was drawn into the political struggle against his will, performing
in a fashion that made the Clendening affair a semicomical or poignant
matter. However, the incident was important, as it revealed the depth
of the disturbance among people who had long supposed that they had
nothing to do with politics and it actually served as the tip-off of the cam-
paign which reached its climax in 1940 with the downing of the Demo-
cratic organization,

Dr. Clendening, Kansas City's famous columnist doctor, was a man
of civilized pursuits, opposed to athletics, politics and anything else that
interfered with eating, drinking and laughter. After writing his popular
book, The Human Body, he kept up literary labor in a syndicated column
for newspapers while continuing his work as a teacher in the University
of Kansas Medical School. As a columnist, Dr, Clendening was primarily
concerned with man's wonderful capacity to enjoy good food, and he de-
voted more attention to the nuances of the burp and the marvels of the
alimentary canal than he did to the latest medical discoveries. He was

35 8 TOM'S TOWN

chary with advice on how people should regulate their lives, and his only
crusading was done against the American sport of football.

To a rare degree, Logan Clendening exemplified the common and
soundly based notion that political activities and interests were unnatural
and degrading tendencies. He lived among the rich Republicans on the
South Side, but his was a free spirit and a bold mind, and he thought
that by standing aloof he could do his bit to discourage the whole miser-
able enterprise of organizing humanity into factions, parties, blocs and
denominations. But the political interference pursued him with relent-
less logic and finally set up a stand outside the window of his large home
at Fifty-sixth Street and State Line. It broke in upon his studies in the
form of the State Line sewer project which City Manager McElroy had
ordered over the protests of the homeowners and without formal Council
authorization. For four months the WPA workmen had been engaged
in this project, tearing up the pavement and boring in the earth with
drills. For days Dr. Clendening listened to the clatter of the air compres-
sor operating the drill outside his home. The machine became a hammer
beating on his mind, giving him no peace from the political problem.

Dr. Clendening's irritation over the drill was no exceptional thing and
the issue it represented was no small matter. It was an incident in a
struggle that had beeo-going on several years between the South Side
and the McElroy administration. Considerable commotion had been
created earlier by the Brush Creek and Brookside sewer projects, which
South Siders protested as being unnecessarily elaborate and expensive,
and declared they were designed primarily to make profitable business
for Pendergast concrete and the Boss's contractor associates, Boyle and
Pryor. This difference produced a personal feud betweenJ^^
and Jesse Clyde Nichols^champion of die South Side and builder of i
^*dal districtTThe crusty JudgelEf eatened tc * ^
viaduct over the Country Club Plaza to spite Mr. Nichols and for a time
the quarrel was diverting to the onlookers, for the common man found
it difficult to choose between Judge McEIrpy and J. C. Nichols, and many
did not realize the deep significance of this struggle.

The contest reached a crisis over the State Line sewer in February,
1939, when Dr. Cleadeaing decided he could stand the drill no longer
He called City Manager McElroy and the Pryor Construction Comjpanj

PAY-OFF 353

to protest. Denied relief in these quarters, he walked a long block to the
home of Boss Pendergast and spent a half -hour on the steps and the
ground o the home vainly trying to attract attention. By this time he
was ready for more direct action, moving with the speed and in the same
mood of another victim of machine oppression who had created a furor at
the City Hall some time before this. That other agitator was the wife of
a city fireman, who called on Judge McElroy to protest his actions in
cutting the wages and breaking up the union of the firemen. Armed with
a leather whip, she was swinging lustily on the Judge when his attendants
went to the rescue. They attempted to explain the woman's action by
charging that she was intoxicated, and she admitted that she had had a
nickel beer, which was all she could afford on her husband's salary of $67
a month.

Fortified with something better than beer, Dr. Clendening obtained an
ax, concealed it under his coat and started toward the offending air
compressor. The WPA workmen paused to watch the agitated ap-
proach of his portly figure, attired in a dark suit with a flower in lapel
and wearing a Homburg. While the startled workmen looked on, Dr.
Clendening silenced the drill with lusty blows of his ax. He was booked
at a police station for intoxication, destruction of federal property and
disturbing the peace. He amused himself in a cell for four hours, singing
songs, reciting from Shakespeare and behaving like the Pickwickian
that he was. Released on bond, he later paid a fifty dollar fine on two
counts and the intoxication charge was dropped.

Of all the blows struck by an individual against political oppression in
this time, the Clendening protest was by all odds the most disquieting.
In the revolt that became general several weeks after the doctor staged
his march, the State Line sewer was closed down for good, along with a
lot of other things. Dr. Clendening found that he had made himself a
hero of the reform, but he wanted no more of the political life, and re-
tired to the background while the conflict rgn its course. In the intolerable
days of the global struggle he declined in health and spirits until he came
upon complete despair, when he removed himself from this politicians*
world by committing suicide.

la the campaigns of February and April, 1940, which ousted the Demo-
crats and brought in the Nonpartisan regime, the South Side realized its

360 TOM'S TOWN

supreme political moment. This was a victory in which the whole city
participated but the leadership, the passion, the spade work and the big
majorities came principally from the Eighth Ward, the section where the
economically and socially important people were concentrated^ ^

The actual management was handled through the Star and the busi-
nessmen. The paper had established itself as the organ or the antimachine
movement by its action in the Mayerberg, New Youth, Fusion and
Coalition struggles of 1932, '34 and '36. It was in the position and it had
. the initiative to fill the vacuum created by the fall of Pendergast in April
iof nineteen hundred ajxd thirty-ninejta two editorials published in that
mtStE^^tltle^Forward Kansas City" and "Opportunity," the Star pro-
vided the name and the idea for the organization that actually ruled
Kansas City in the brief Smith interim period. That was followed quick-
ly by the formation of the Forward Kansas City Committee under the
leadership of R. J. DeMotte, president of the Chamber of Commerce;
Vincent O'Flaherty, Jr., president of the Real Estate Board; W. T. Grant,
insurance executive, and J. W. Perry, a retired banker. The Star had
called for a businessman's organization to guide Mayor Smith and the
council in this emergency and, with the old bosses on the run, the execu-
tives hurried to take over all the key spots. The Executive Committee of
the Forwards was composed of Perry and Grant, Republicans, O'Fla-
herty, Robert L. Mehornay and Robert B. Caldwell, Democrats. Banker
Perry was made chairman.

The size of the businessmen's revolt was shown when the Forward
Committee expanded its membership to 339, its list being a roster of
financially important names, both Republican and Democratic.

Conspicuously missing from the list of Forward subcommittees was
one for labor.

There was such an amplitude of opposition by this time that the For-
wards faced a large problem in amalgamating the various groups. In ad-
dStion to the businessmen's own committee, these included the Repub-
lican organization, two independent Democratic outfits, the Ministerial
Alliance and the Charter Party, headed by Hal W. Luhnow, director of
the enterprises owned by the city's leading philanthropist, WiUiamybl-
Irar, They were ail brought together, under the name of die UniteoCam-

S.I.Ray in The Kansas City Star

Only the First Round

Celebrating the results of the Charter Amendment election of February 13, I94<V
which foretold the, cleanup victory of April 2,

362 TOM'S TOWN

paign, for the charter amendment election in February and the election
of new city officers in April.

The Democratic organization made only a modest effort to defeat the
charter amendment, which cut the councilmen's terms from four to two
years and thus served the purpose of a recall by bringing the next elec-
tion in April. The boys at the City Hall had shown immense resource-
fulness in blocking the original recall petitions, employing such devices
as having councilmen resign and appointing successors who, under the
law, weren't subject to recall for six months. Recall petitions mysteriously
disappeared at the City Hall and other things happened to them. When
the recallers wearied of this contest and turned to the charter amendment
device, the Democrats contented themselves with offering four other
amendments to confuse the voters. The citizens were not misled, voting
95>683 to 17,316 for Amendment No. i and rejecting the others.

Squaring away for the final test, the United Campaign people named a
ticket composed of five Democrats and four Republicans for the Council
places, headed by John B. Gage, Democratic lawyer and cattle raiser,
who served as mayor of Kansas City for three successive terms. Among
the successful Council candidates was Joseph C. Fennelly, leader of
N.YJvL in the 1934 battle. This bipartisan group took its stand on a non-
partisan platform, a point of higher strategy and political philosophy
which has been fiercely debated for six years. There are many arguments
for the nonpartisan approach, but the only practical one seems to be that
it provides a cloak for the bipartisan character of the ticket, divesting the
candidates of their proper party labels and confusing some voters as to
how many Republicans are on the ticket. Under this device, the Re-
publicans have regularly taken four out of nine places, which may be
more than they would get under honest proportional representation
based 0n actual voting strength if the situation were one that permitted a
straight test between the two major parties, which it isn't, In other words,
a way had to be found to weld the rump Democrats and the Republicans
IE the only combination that seemed capable of challenging the Demo-
cratic organization, and the nonpartisan fiction effectively served that
fmrpo$e, but it took a powerful lot of propaganda from the Star to make it

The regular Democrats used the nonpartisan trick as one of their chid

PAY-OFF 363

talking points in the 1940 campaign, warning that nothing but trouble
would come from "the political monstrosity of nonpartisanship ... a
political will-o'-the-wisp, which in the past had led only to political ex-
tinction."

For their main argument, the assault on the Star, the Democrats called
out their ablest orators, who warned that if this battle was lost, "then
Democrats of this city must recognize that no Democrat can hereafter
be elected to office without the apostolic blessing of the Kansas City Star?
Women were reminded that if the Nonpartisans won, then none of their
husbands could rise to office "without the benediction of the Kansas City
Star! 9

. Uncle Joe Shannon, in the tenth year of his service in Congress, re-
turned from Washington to assist the salvaging eflfort, and the touch of
his smooth hand was discernible in the strategy that followed. He did
not, however, take a position up front in the speaking and he was a
rather bemused figure in the midst of the storm. He looked in on some o
the United Campaign rallies, watching, listening, smiling benevolently
onalL

Congressman Shannon was particularly interested in the United Cam-
paign's women, for they were the sensation of the election melodrama,
introducing a refinement that was completely bewildering to veteran
wardheelers. Among those responsible for this innovation was former
Senator Reed, ex-champion of the Goats but a hero of the Republicans
since his bolt from the Roosevelt ticket in 1936, which he repeated in
1940. Appearing publicly at one of the Forward Kansas City Committee
rallies, he drew cheers with a call for a cleanup and a suggestion that the
women be given a large role in this campaign. Three women were ad-
mitted to the inner council of the Forward Committee and the special
division they organized for the campaign included an estimated six
thousand ward and precinct workers. They adopted the broom as their
symbol and wore it with great style. Their leaders were the darlings of
the Star and the South Side.

Heading the women's division was Mrs. George H. Gorton, credited
by the Nonpartisans with being one of their foremost vote getters. Her
main assistants were Mrs. Williston P. Munger, head of the finance
committee, Mrs. Russell C. Comer, chairman of the Charter Party

364 TOM'S TOWN

women, and Mrs. Louise Stewart, vice-chairman of the Republican
County Committee, Mrs. Munger praised Mrs. Gorton for "her sure-
footed wisdom and capacity for facing dark facts." Mrs. Gorton called
Mrs. Comer "a lovable little dynamo" and praised all of her lieutenants.
They were all extremely efficient and the men looked on in admiration
mixed with some trepidation.

Mrs. Gorton grew angry over a Democratic pamphlet libeling the
United ladies as "pinknailed, cocktail-drinking, cigarette-smoking South
Siders." She singled out Uncle Joe Shannon at a noonday rally in the
women's headquarters to assure him that she was a true Democrat from
Alabama* This Alabamy Democrat campaigned vigorously against
Roosevelt in the fall of that same year but in April her nonpartisan ap-
peal won thousands of votes, with her assistants manning 4,500 tele-
phones and driving 5,000 motor cars to carry citizens to the polls.

The returns showed 94,192 for John B. Gage for mayor, 74,033 for his
Democratic rival, a majority of 20,159. The United ticket carried seven
of the other eight Council places, the Democrats retaining control in
the First District, the old river ward precincts where Alderman Jim
Pendergast had started all this.

The victory celebration reached its height in the women's headquarters^
where a crowd of 1,500 excited partisans were packed like sardines. A
band struck up, "Happy Days Are Here Again," Somebody started a
cakewalk and the throng joined in.

Mrs. Gorton shouted to make herself heard above the clamor.

"Tea?" she cried. **We aren't going to serve tea. It's going to be punch,
fruit punch, with a brass band."

Thus Good Government came to Kansas City.

THE PUBLIC PEACE

THE LORD works in mysterious ways and one of the larger reforms in
Kansas City was well advanced even before Mayor Gage and his bipar-
tisan Nonpartisans took over the City Hall. In fact, this particular clean-
up was so far along that it had produced a major reaction, creating a crisis
for the new administration in the first years of Nonpartisaa rule.

PAY-OFF 365

This political disturbance was the work o Lear B. Reed, G-man,^
Minute Man, author and hero of the book jfemswrW^^
police chief of Kansas City in July, 1939. Mr. Reed combined in his per-
son the more formidable characteristics of Fearless Fosdick and Paul
Revere, and he was equally energetic in efforts to save Kansas City from
criminals and the nation from Reds, whom he regarded as much more
of a threat to America than the British Redcoats ever were.

A crusader of Chief Reed's range and temperament was bound to kick
up a row in any community, but the situation in Kansas City was one
that enabled him to get the maximum effect. He reformed, intimidated,
irritated or angered so many different kinds of citizens that he distracted
attention from other important phases of the new order in town* Besides
suppressing criminals and scattering Reds, he antagonized workingmen
and union officials, Negroes, liberals and a wide variety of ordinary indi-
viduals who began to wonder if democracy could stand the strain of abso-
lute rectitude.

Chief Reed was drafted from the Federal Bureau of Investigation by
the new Police Board that Governor Stark appointed at the end of Home
Rule, and his particular sponsor was the Board chairman, Edgar Shook,
lawyer and one of the South Side's early champions in tl\e fight on the
Pendergast organization. Reed had served in the F.B J. fourteen years
and was familiar with the Kansas City situation from many assignments
in this area.

When he became the Kansas City police chief he was thirty-nine years
old, in the prime of phenomenal vigor. He wore eyeglasses which didn't
make him look studious, for he had been a two-hundred-pound tackle at
Richmond University and grew ,more athletic with age. A native of
Georgia, he spoke with a Southern accent which didn't sound like a
drawl. His heroes were J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I., to whom he de-
voted a glowing chapter in Human Wolves, the breathless narrative of
his adventures as G-man and police chief. When he was not preoccupied
with the organizational details and laboratory work of modern scientific
investigation, he was out in the field charging around in a manner, that
would have impressed the Revolutionary hero who aroused the Minute
Men.

Before his first month in office elapsed, Chief Reed staged his most

366 TOM'S TOWN

spectacular performance in crime suppression. He summoned to his office
Big Charley Carollo, the collector o the gambling syndicate, and en-
forced the invitation with the kind of threat that Carollo understood*
This unnaturalized Italian gangster was soon to be sentenced to Federal
prison but before he departed he spent thirty minutes in the intimidating
presence of Chief Reed. Carollo was informed that his days of dictating
to the police were over.

Whether Carollo was more discouraged by the Reed talk than the
Federal sentences is a question that has never been settled but the avail-
able evidence is that he was properly impressed with the f orcef ulness of
the new chief. Lear Reed himself gave the press a dramatic account of
his effect on the big gangster. He described how his powerful eyes bored
in while he told Big Charley that he would engage a hundred ex-marines
if necessary to work on the gangsters and that he would throw the entire
mob into jail for twenty-four hours if they didn't show the right respect
for cops.

"If it's necessary to bring your kind in on a slab, that's the way we will
do it," Chief Reed said that he said.

Big Charley Carollo withdrew into the N6rth Side background until
he left for prison, Chief Reed turned to other work and the Kansas
City cleanup began to attract national attention, with Chief Reed serving
as his most efficient press agent. He wrote chiefs in other cities telling
them of the change in his territory. "The underworld here has been
getting a cleanup the like of which it never dreamed/' he explained.

The Reed crusade ran on for two years, giving conclusive proof of two
important points: One, that police provide a higher degree of public
safety when they are fighting against rather than working with the
underworld. Two, it is impossible to deal adequately or permanently
with the police problem by using authoritarian methods in an American
community. The demonstration on the second point filled the Lear Reed
episode with political controversy. Labor representatives and Negroes
protested against some of the police methods. Reed's Red hunt provoked
wide agitation. He set up a file of subversive activity reports and starred a
campaign for the wholesale fingerprinting of private citizens. Labor
unions stormed that their members and organizer^ were befog forced
to give their prints in violation of their civil rights. They filed $w$$ and

PAY-OFF 367

called on the Police Board to stop the fingerprint practice. One of Reed's
main supporters, the Star, warned that the crusade was going too far
when the Chief ran a Communist speaker and his wife out of town, and
again when Reed sought to organize a semi-military "civil defense**
organization allied with the police*

Chief Reed remained under fire from Kansas City's Negro com-
munity, an agitation that extended over many months. The chief re-
garded himself as a great friend of the colored man, remarking once that
he knew precisely how Abraham Lincoln felt when he first saw the slaves
on his trip down the Mississippi River. The Negroes were unable to see
evidences of this attitude in the measures Reed's police took to keep order
on Vine Street and in other parts of the Negro quarter. Their indignation
flared high over the slaying of a colored man by a police officer in a night
club and several other violent incidents. They carried their case to the
Missouri governor, a Republican who had succeeded Lloyd Stark, list-
ing eighteen instances of alleged police brutality against Negro citizens.

It is possible that Reed might have weathered these storms, or at least
have delayed his leave-taking, if he had not muffed the investigation of
the principal crime that occurred in his two-year reign a murder mys-
tery that involved one of the most gruesome crimes in Kansas City
annals, and one that had sharp political repercussions. This was the slay-
ing of Leila Welsh, twenty-four years old, granddaughter of a well-to-do
pioneer Kansas City realtor, an heiress and a popular and attractive
young woman who had been a beauty queen at the University of Kansas
City a few years before her death. She was slain in her home in the dark
hours of a Sunday morning in March, 1941, not long dfter she returned
at 1 130 A.M. with her escort, Richard Funk, with whom she had been
keeping company for five years. After bidding Funk goodnight, she
stopped in the bedroom of her mother, Mrs. Marie Welsh, for a brief talk.
Her brother, George Welsh, twenty-seven years old, was dozing on the
davenport in the front room in their one-and-a-half -story bungalow at
6109 Rockhill Road, and she passed him on the way to her rear bedroom.
She was brutally murdered in bed not long after she retired, but her body
was not discovered until after nine o'clock Sunday morning. Her mother
told the police that she entered Miss Welsh's room to close the bedroom
window which her daughter always left open at night, and had crossed

3 68 TOM'S TOWN

to the window before she noticed that anything was wrong. The brother,
George, was not in the house then, having arisen earlier and gone to keep
an appointment with people who were looking over a house for which he
was agent.

The city was terrorized by the ghastly nature of this murder in the
center of one of the town's most respectable residential areas. Leila
Welsh's head was bashed in with a hammer, her throat cut with a knife
and a piece of flesh was cut from her hip- The missing piece was later
found in the yard of a neighbor, where it was picked up by a dog. There
was a confusing plenitude of clues inside the girl's room and outside
the first floor window through which the killer apparently had entered.
The knife, the hammer and a blood-stained pair of cotton gloves, among
other things, were found- The knife was traced to the dealer who sold
it and he described and identified the young man who bought it. The
man who sold the hammer was found but his description of the buyer
did not tally with the description of the knife purchaser except in one
detail, and he was unable to identify the suspect picked out by the trades-
man who sold the knife. Fingerprints were found on the windowsill of
Leila's bedroom which matched the prints of George Welsh. He stoutly
denied any knowledge of the crime and conducted himself coolly
throughout the investigation. His mother expressed absolute confidence
in him and all the evidence made public indicated that a bond of rare
affection existed between brother and sister.

Along with the bewildering array of clues, the police were bothered by
the number of people who wanted to confess the murder but couldn't
establish their claims, together with the advice of psychiatrists and a series
of letters from cranks, including a thirty-seven-page "Complete Solution
of the Welsh Case." Chief Reed took complete charge of the investigation
and his performance was distinguished by his quarrels with the Demo-
cratic sheriff and county prosecutor's office, who tried to horn in on the
inquiry, and by his series of announcements that the mystery was about
to be solved or was virtually solved. His most interesting contribution
to public enlightenment was his discovery that the killer had spelled out
an initial in blood on one of the victim's legs. The Chief regarded this
as the murderer's calling card, marking him as an egotistical type, but the
clue yielded nothing more than some fancy Hawkshaw speculation.

PAY-OFF 369

Partisan differences over the case continued for some tit$t after Reed
quit as police chief, and the mysterv was hopeles c !j involved in the
dispute. A grand jury called by Circuit Judge Marion D. Waltner in-
dicted George Welsh for the murder and issued a sensational report
on Reed's alleged conduct o the original investigation, charging, among
other things, that the chief had positive identification of George as
purchaser of the knife thirteen days after the crime. The indictment of
Welsh was set aside by Circuit Judge Emory H. Wright, who upheld a
defense plea in abatement and declared that the grand jury's actions in
interviewing witnesses outside the jury room, employment of detec-
tives and use of county funds by jurors in carrying on their investigation
were violations of the statutes. Welsh later was brought to trial on a
murder charge filed by the county's prosecuting attorney and was
acquitted by the jury that tried him.

Chief Reed resigned in August, 1941, to take a job in Chicago, stepping
out of office at a moment when the sounds of derision from unregenerate
Twelfth Street, the protests of Negro delegations to Jefferson City and
criticism from other quarters were giving the Nonpartisan politicians
chills over the future of the reform.

After his departure, the Police Board picked as Reed's successor Harold
Anderson, a Reed man who had exhibited an engaging personality and
pleasant voice as leader of the police quartet. While the politicians
watched to see if adequate law enforcement could not be had in a more
routine manner, the citizens were permitted to look around and study
some of the other things that the Nonpartisan reform was accomplishing.

GOOD GOVERNMENT

THE LADIES with the brooms, their leaders and admirers generated so
much enthusiasm that six years later their movement was still going
strong, at the end of which time they had triumphed over the Demo-
cratic opposition in three more elections. So much attention has been
attracted by the success of the Nonpartisans in municipal administration
and political campaigning that insufficient notice has beea given to the

370 TOM'S TOWN

comeback efforts o the Goats and the Rabbits under the command of
the old bosses' successors, Jimmy Pcndergast and Frank Shannon.

With Tom Pendergast forcibly restrained from participation in politics
and Joe Shannon removed by his death in 1943, many observers pro-
claimed that an era had ended and confidently looked for the speedy dis-
appearance of the old Democratic factions as they existed and operated
in the heyday of Tom and Joe. They were, in fact, demoralized, but the
retreat was neither so extensive nor so fast as was generally supposed.

However, the proclaimers of a new era had much more than the rout
of the old organization to support them in the impression that the Kansas
City reform was permanent. Changes that have been effected in these few
years are so extensive that a whole book could very well be devoted to the
new development. National attention has been called to tfie Nonpartisan
experiment in newspapers and magazines during this period, but nothing
like an adequate appraisal has yet been made. The change already has
endured longer and accomplished more than any similar effort in the
past. It is certain to have lasting effects and is likely to continue in its
present form for some time, even though it is not yet clear that there will
be no important political interruptions before the decade of 1940 runs out.

One distinguishing feature of the Nonpartisan administration is that
It is a businessman's government, just as surely as the McElroy regime
was a businessman's government during a large part of that enterprise.
This aspect of the Kansas City change is perhaps most striking when it
is compared to earlier reform efforts. In his investigations of the battles
against the great city machines of forty and fifty years ago, Lincoln
Steflfens found that the do-gooders invariably encountered major re-
sistance from the dominant economic interests, and that the machine in
^act was the instrument of the business community, leading to the conclu-
sion that private economic interests by their very nature required corrupt
politics* Another Steffeas is needed to study the implications of the
Kansas City crusade in which the economic powers took over the reform
at dbe last and made it their own, doing the things that have made possi-
ble its consolidation.

On the score of administration the Nonpartisan scheme has thus far
justified all the hopes of old Colonel Nelson, the Star editors* Walter
Matsdieck and' others who campaigned so long for this innovation in

PAY-OFF 37*

municipal government. Achievements to date have been confined mostly
to improvement in the routine services, but there has been a gain all
along the line, a change that has been large in some departments such
as financial management, personnel and social welfare and recreation.
Along with a broadening conception of the government's functions in a
modern city there has been elaborate planning for well-rounded develop-
ment of the civic plant. The war interrupted construction, but the city
now is on the threshold of the greatest civic undertaking in its history,
combining a large public building program with extension in regular city
services. How well this is promoted and carried out by the present occu-
pants of the City Hall will have a large bearing on the length of their
tenure*

Whatever comes, even if the Nonpartisans should be replaced at the
next election in 1948, the city may count some permanent gain from the
changes made and the new methods and techniques introduced. A new
administration would be slow in abolishing many of the things that have
brought so much luster to the Nonpartisans. That an important part of
the business community will fight hard to prevent a change may be
safely predicted on the basis of the dollars-and-cents record of the reform.
Increased efficiency under the direction of City Manager L. P. Cooking-
ham has enabled the administration to reduce the size of the payroll and
effect other economies, to increase wages, to retire many of the obligations
left by the last regime, to place the city on a sound financial basis^ to cut
the tax rate on real and personal property and lower real estate tax
valuations by $30,000,000, and to create a large surplus. The change in
the financial picture was humorously illustrated in the last campaign
when the Democratic opposition had to make an issue over the surplus,
accusing the city government of hoarding, a departure from the old cry
over deficits which didn't make any votes for the outs.

The present city administration closed the 1946 fiscal year with the
statement that Kansas City was better off by $22,000,000 than it was six
years ago. Among the achievements listed in the report were permanent
improvements costing $9,125,527; a reduction of $6,322,054 in the bonded
debt, payment of $1,982,749 on backpay claims and unpaid bills from,
the previous administration and a cash surplus of $3*049,300.

372 TOM'S TOWN

Unlike most past reforms, the Nonpartisan movement does not depend
entirely on its record in office and its personalities to sustain it. It has no
personalities like Golden Rule Jones of Toledo or Tom Johnson of Cleve-
land. In place of strong individuals who dramatize the reform, the
Nonpartisans have a political party, or rather an organization that
possesses some of the features of a party. This is called the Citizens Party,
and it represents the various groups that were combined in the United
Campaign ticket in the 1940 battle that overthrew the Democratic or-
ganization,

The history of reform failure is written largely in terms of the inability
of the uplif ters to form a real political organization or to seize control of
one of the regular parties, so the Citizens Party may represent an im-
portant forward step. For example, Mayor John B. Gage, who came in
with the reform in 1940, was able to retire at the end of his third term
without jeopardizing the popular appeal of the Citizens cause, which
has been signally successful in not identifying itself with one individual.
Gage's place was taken by William E. Kemp, former city counselor, who
became the second Citizens mayor of Kansas City.

It is difficult, however, to form a true political party that is confined to
activity in the local field, and particularly one that is composed of such
disparate elements as the Citizens attract. Internal differences, factional
and partisan, keep it from going beyond the local level and create difficul-
ties for it even in this restricted field. It is not a party but a campaign
device that brings together the reform or independent Democrats and
the Republicans, It is held together chiefly by the businessmen and the
Star, and, of course, by the women with the brooms. So the Citizens
Party is not without some substantial support despite its curious political
structure.

This question is now the most important issue in the Kansas City re-
form and before long there must be an answer, showing whether the
Citizens Party has much of a future or whether there has been or is liable
to be anything like a regeneration of either or both of the major parties.
It may turn out that the Citizens Party and the nonpartisan approach
are not an answer to the breakdown in the American political system In
the city, but rather a stopgap, and also a symptom at the depth erf, the

PAY-OFF 373

political crisis. The Citizens Party has no traditions, no state or national
connections and no social philosophy of the kind that gives life and sta-
bility to a party. The Nonpartisan organization was brought into being,
nourished and enabled to prevail by the corruption and demoralization
of the real political parties. Under the American democratic order, the
true remedy for the collapse of the political system lies in the reformation
and rehabilitation of the Republican and Democratic parties. The non-
partisan idea can be used to obstruct and delay the work of party re-
vitalization, assuming that such a revival in the local field is either feasible
or desired by the citizens at this late date. Thus far there has been no
broadening of the base of political organization to give a larger voice to
other elements of the population besides business, and the significant
thing about all this is the small part the public actually plays in the selec-
tion of candidates and the formulation o policy.

Because the routine services do represent a large part of municipal
administration, the idea grew up that city government is a business opera-
tion, largely divorced from policy-making, legislation, social planning
and political thinking. The experience of the Kansas City Nonpartisan
venture is that the political element is still the chief factor, and will con-
tinue to be as long as we have free elections and democratic forms. No
reform will be safe for long unless it restores the health of the political
parties.

While the Nonpartisan administration has flourished, the Citizens
Party gives no indication of becoming anything more than a sterile
hybrid. On the other hand, the regular Democrats gave vigorous signs
of a revival after a couple of years, suggesting that Jimmy Pendergast
and Frank Shannon inherited more political savvy than they were
allowed in some circles. Jim seems to be a mild and cautious individual
in comparison with his uncle and his father, the pugnacious Tom and
Mike, and Frank is regarded as but a small chip off the old Joe Shan-
non block. Both of the new factional leaders are lawyers. Both like to
stay in the background but they have gradually been drawing more at-
tention.

When the smoke cleared from the United Campaign battle of 1940,
the Democrats had one Council seat in the City Hall, from the First
District, and retained a hold on the Courthouse. The reformers at first

374 TOM'S TOWN

made a spirited effort to change the order in the Courthouse and in the
county Democratic organization. They made some gains with a new
presiding judge, George S. Montgomery, and with the co-operation o
Mayor Roger T. Sermon of Independence, personal friend of Harry
Truman and leader of the Democratic faction of Eastern Jackson County.
The offensive did not achieve its goal, however, and the failure was due
to the fact that the Citizens Party could function only in city contests
and the reform Democrats had no program, no ticket and no strong party
leaders to rally the faithful in the county contests.

Low point for the regular Democrats was reached in the city election
of 1942, when the Citizens majority passed beyond thirty thousand and
they again captured eight of the nine Council seats. It appeared then
that the old organization might break up into various small factions,
with Pendergast being eclipsed in importance by ward leaders who had
acknowledged Uncle Tom's leadership but couldn't be held in line by
Jim- The decline in relative voting strength was arrested by the Demo-
crats in the city election of 1944, and in the August primaries of that
year, the Pendergast leadership was reasserted in the county organiza-
tion in the election of committeemen, as well as strengthened in the
Courthouse through the selection of successful candidates for county
offices* Jim Pendergast's prestige was further increased by the nomina-
tion of a candidate for governor who had the indorsement of his faction
and against whom the old boss-control issue was vigorously raised by the
Star* In the primary he eliminated two rivals who were identified with
the Kansas City and Jackson County anti-Pendergast offensive, Edgar
Shook and Roger Sermon, and went on to win the final election. Things
were looking up for the regulars. -

The organization Democrats obviously were waiting for the Citizens
amalgamation to fall apart, and they decided the time f or this had come
in the spring of 1946. The result was the most spirited campaign since
1940 Jn the last two city campaigns, the Democrats had been beaten each
time by the same tactics that won for the coalition in 1940, with tne Star
and the Nonpartisan orators fastening the machine label on the ogjx>si-
tion. The Democratic leaders endeavored to overcome this handicap in
1546 by employing a new method of naming the ticket. An advisory

PAY-OFF 375

committee of twenty-five was appointed, and it named a nominating
committee of one hundred which conducted public hearings. This sub-
terfuge did not long prevent the Star from crediting selection of the
ticket to Pendergast and associates, and again working the old boss bogey
to the limit.

In retaliation for the plastering they got with the machine tag, the
Democrats went all out with a parade of their favorite bogey domina-
tion by the Star. Robert K. Ryland, the Democratic candidate for mayor,
railed against the newspaper monopoly and oppression in a colorful man-
ner that was reminiscent of Jim Reed in his early fighting days. He
succeeded in reminding everyone that Kansas City now has but one
daily newspaper, and convinced all who were not already convinced that
the Star is the main force in the Citizens combination; but again a ma-
jority decided that the Republican newspaper and the Nonpartisan will-
o'-the-wisp produced the kind of government they wanted. However,
the Democrats picked up one more Council seat, making it two to seven,
and reduced the Citizens voting lead sharply outside the rock-ribbed
Republican Eighth Ward. Showing the new trend, the Citizens majority
of some twenty-four thousand in 1944 was cut to less than twelve thou-
sand in 1946. The Citizens got 49,166 in the light vote in 1944 and 63,780
in 1946; the Democrats polled only 25,135 for the head of their ticket in
1944 but doubled the figure to deliver 51,906 in 1946.

A stronger show of Pendergast power was made in the 1946 congres-
sional primary, when Jim Pendergast complied with President Truman's
publicly expressed request to "purge" Congressman Roger C. Slaughter,
recalcitrant Democratic representative from the Missouri Fifth District.
While this work was being done, Pendergast and his allies swept the
field, nominating their candidates for county offices, winning firmer con-
trol of the coiinty committee and temporarily burying Frank Shannon,
the new Rabbit faction leader, who had backed Congressman Slaughter.
Observers were startled at the size of the Democratic vote rolled up on
the North Side, recalling the top-heavy majorities of Tom Pendergast's
heyday.

The fight gained momentum in the campaign for the November elec-
tion, turning into something of a revival of forces and personalities that

376 TOM'S TOWN

had figured conspicuously in earlier Kansas City politics. Albert L.
Reeves, Jr., son of the Federal judge who had presided in many of the
sensational court actions of the 1930'$, was nominated for Congress on
the Republican ticket, and later elected in a campaign that was high-
lighted by his verbal blasts against the "Pendergast machine." Another
familiar name had reappeared in the primary when the Democratic
congressional nomination was sought by Jerome Walsh, son of the late
Frank P. Walsh, the party agitator of other days. Pursuing his father's
liberal line, Jerome Walsh took a strong pro-Roosevelt stand and went
down to defeat when the Truman-Pendergast support went to a third
and less New Deal-ish man in the race, and the P.A.C. played along with
the organization.

Following the primary, the Star opened one of its heaviest antimachine
offensives, conducting a private investigation of vote frauds in the recent
primary that was even more elaborate than the newspaper's ghost hunt
of 1936. This inquiry drew the attention of the Federal district attorney,
and brought the F.B.I. and agents of a congressional committee into the
field^The agitation grew with the formation of a Jackson County Com-
mittee for Honest Elections, and with the return to action of Rabbi
Samuel S. Mayerberg, leader of the Charter League crusade of 1932. A
new element entered the conflict with the organization of a veterans'
committee that did effective work for the Republicans.

The general Republican trend of 1946 completed the work, and when
the storm cleared, the Jackson County Democrats found they had lost a
scat in Congress, two key posts in the Courthouse and a majority of the
county delegation in the legislature. It was a severe jolt, and there was
much speculative talk of a continued Democratic decline, with the out-
look being made darker by the revival of Democratic factional warfare
in the primary. However, the size of the Democratic vote and the num-
ber of offices retained were impressive in comparison with Democratic
performances elsewhere outside the Solid South, and in view of the
many depressing factors besides the national G.O.P. trend.

Meanwhile, business goes on at 1908 Main Street. Many things have
changed in Kansas City, but the Goats and the Rabbits and .the Star have
not yet ended their long contest and the road to reform still has many
strange turns.

PAY-OFF 377

THE FINAL STAKES

IN THE FALL of 1944, Tom Pendergast witnessed his last political cam-
paign. He had been out of prison since late in May, 1940, after serving
a year and a day of his fifteen-month sentence, but he was still not en-
tirely a free man under the terms of the rigid five-year probation which
Federal Judge Merrill E. Otis fixed for him. Until May, 1945, he was
prohibited from engaging in any form of political activity, even from
discussing politics or granting interviews. He was not permitted to
go to his old headquarters at 1908 Main Street. And he was under
strict orders to eschew all gambling interests. He reported regularly
to a probation officer and moved in a limited circle between the office
of the Ready-Mixed Concrete Company at Twenty-fifth and Summit
streets and his modified Italian style mansion at 5650 Ward Parkway,,
where he lived alone in three of the many rooms in that imposing three-
story affair. Mrs. Pendergast moved away to an apartment in the Country
Club Plaza, and while there was no divorce or legal separation the gossip
was that she had left Uncle Tom because he had broken his promise to
her to give up gambling before the crash in 1939. The retired Goat lead-
er's loneliness was broken by visits from his children and a few cronies,
and his only amusements were reminiscing, taking motor car rides and
watching the trains go by his office adjoining the Union terminal yards.

Rumors that Pendergast was eager to return to political life were preva-
lent throughout this period and in 1943 he made a determined but un-
successful attempt to obtain executive clemency to end the strange exile
that was imposed by the Otis^probation. Pendergast's petition for release
from the probation was recommended by a group of prominent citizens >
including the town's leading banker, its foremost real estate man, a
Protestant minister and a Catholic priest, but Judge Otis and Roosevelt's
Department of Justice quickly squelched the Boss's hope for a pardon.

Although he was still not entirely free, Pendergast in this same year,.
1943, finally was relieved from the threat of further punishment for his
part in the insurance compromise bribe. Since his return from Federal
prison, he had been fighting bribe conspiracy and contempt charges that

378 TOM'S TOWN

were filed in state and Federal courts some time after the income tax ac-
tions. The state case collapsed when A. L. McCormack, the insurance
man who delivered the money, refused to testify. In the Federal Court,
Pendergast and O'Malley were sentenced to two years each in prison on
contempt charges growing out of the insurance settlement. McCormack,
who appeared as a government witness, was granted probation on a two-
year sentence. The contempt sentences were set aside in 1943 by the
United States Supreme Court in a six to one decision, Mr. Justice Jack-
son dissenting from the ruling that a three-year statute of limitations
barred prosecution. The contempt occurred February i, 1936, with the
foisting of the fraudulent insurance settlement upon the Federal Court,
and the contempt prosecution was not instituted until July 13, 1940, more
than a year beyond the statutory limitation discovered by the defense.

Judge Otis had taken the initiative in this prosecution, which was
accompanied by a successful effort to recover for the polieyholders the
money which the fire insurance companies obtained under the Pender-
gast-O'Malley compromise that gave the companies eighty per cent of
the ten-million-dollar impounded fund. A three-judge Federal Court
directed that all of this fund must be turned over to the polieyholders,
and the companies carried the issue to the United States Supreme Court,
which refused to review the decision. In July, 1944, the Federal Court's
custodian of the impounded millions began to mail out checks to
policyholders.*

10 that same July, T. J. Pendergast observed his seventy-second birth-
day anniversary* He found his desk had been decorated with flowers
when he went to his office in the Ready-Mixed Concrete Company build-
ing. His friends remarked that he looked betterjthan he had in years.

The old Boss lived to see the Goats start their recovery in the court-
house and the county organization, an action that gained headway in
the campaign of 1944. He also was privileged to see in that campaign tie
defeat of a couple of figures in the antimachine crusade who believed that
their just reward was the governorship. And he was drawn into the glare

*For their part, the 122 fire insurance companies involved in the corrupt settlement
were to find that justice was slow but sure and severe- Instead of getting possession of
the nearly eight million dollars which they would have received under the settlement^ they
were assessed fines totaling $2,090,000 by the Missouri Supreme Court in December, 1946"-

S.J. Ray in The Kansas City Star

Here Come the Boys!

In the primary campaign o 1940, when Harry S. Truman was nominated for his
second term in the Senate,

380 TOM'S TOWN

of the national spotlight again with Harry Truman's nomination and
successful race for the Vice-Presidency in the summer and fall of 1944.

Newspaper commentators generally have acclaimed the Truman pro-
motion over Henry Wallace in the Chicago Convention of 1944 as a
supreme achievement of the big city bosses, Kelly and others, working
with the Southern and congressional organization leaders against the
purposeful C.I.O. strategists and the starry-eyed New Dealers. They did
not include Tom Pendergast in this intrigue, for Uncle Tom was care-
fully observing the terms of his probation. However, the retired Boss had
had a hand in Truman's preparation for this key role at a decisive stage of
his career* Truman's nomination in Chicago climaxed a comeback in
public life that has few if any parallels, and one that would not have been
possible without the Pendergast support.

Senator Truman's career was generally believed to be over in April,
1939, when his principal political sponsor was indicted. Truman received
the news of Tom Pendergast's fall with the comment: "I-am sorry this
happened, but I am not going to desert a ship that is in distress." Some
persons were offended by this statement but many were favorably im-
pressed by the spunk and personal loyalty displayed by the man from
Independence. None supposed then or for some time afterward that he
was the man destined to fulfill the old Pendergast hope of some day pro-
ducing a President of the United States from Jackson County.

Truman's first term in the Senate expired in 1941 and he came home in
1940 to check the prospects for re-election. He found them better than
most observers imagined. One of the large factors in his favor was the
support of organized labor, particularly the railroad brotherhoods, whose
good work for Truman was recalled repeatedly in the press after he
cracked down so hard on the engineers and trainmen in the 1946 railroad
strike.

A more important factor was the Jackson County Democratic organi-
zation, which provided Truman with a large block of votes from his
own county and gave him the power and the connections for some profita-
ble trading on the opposite side of the state. This was a decisive factor,
for it gave Truman the inside track with the St. Louis organization
headed by Bernard Dickmana and Robert E. Hannegan, who needed

PAY-OFF 381

^

Jackson County votes for their candidate for governor, Lawrence
McDaniel. \

A third large factor was a situation of a kind that had developed with
interesting consistency in the past to help out a Kansas City organization
man in a tight race. That was the three-way contest, repeating the vote-
splitting procedure that figured importantly in Truman's first nomination
as senator. It happened again in 1940 when the two Democratic heroes
of the reform, Governor Stark and District Attorney Milligan, decided
at the same time that they were entitled to the senatorship. Although it
was certain that these two would divide the outstate and antimachine
vote to an extent that greatly improved Truman's chances, Stark still
looked like the winner until he became preoccupied with a Stark boom
for Vice-President and a Stark hope for a place in Roosevelt's Cabinet.
His political opponents encouraged this inflation at the same time that
they derided him for big-headedness, declaring that Stark was running
for everything.

The potent Jackson County organization figured further in the con-
sideration that kept Senator Bennett C. Clark from giving Milligan the
support he expected. Clark had received the Pendergast backing in his
re-nomination fight in 1938 and was going to need it again in 1944. He
was, moreover, a close personal friend of Truman's by this time. He
delivered the nominating speech for Truman at Chicago in 1944 and
received a presidential appointment to a judgeship after Truman entered
the White House.

The Stark forces looked for a large majority from St. Louis in 1940
but could get? no final tommitment from the bosses there, who put
off the deal until Stark could make up his mind what office he was
running for. Milligan's backers meanwhile were quieted with the secret
word that the St. Louis organization actually intended to divide its votes
between Truman and Milligan. At the last moment, in a coup engineered
by Hannegan, the organization went down the line for Truman, deliver-
ing an 8,311 lead from St. Louis for him. When all the ballots in the
state were counted, he had won the nomination by ^7,476 votes, with
Stark in the runner-up position.

Returning to Washington in the third Roosevelt landslide, Senator
Truman stepped to the forefront of the national picture with his com-

382 TOM'S TOWN

mittec to investigate wartime contracts and production. In this he em-
ployed a technique in which all representatives from the Jackson County
school were thoroughly grounded. Senator Reed had built himself up
for his presidential bid in 1928 with his Senate campaign funds inves-
tigating committee. Congressman Joe Shannon was endeavoring to draw
the national spotlight with his committee to discourage government
competition with private business and his bill to place government on a
cost accounting basis, before Mr. Roosevelt's economists made all this
very quaint. Representative C. Jasper Bell picked a likely publicity
medium with his committee to investigate the Townsend Movement.
Congressman Roger C. Slaughter follows the tradition with his com-
mittee to investigate surplus property sales.

From this point on, the advancement of Truman was an affair man-
aged entirely by himself, the other bosses in the party and the American
press. The commentators who gave major credit to the old bosses for the
maneuver that put Truman on the ticket with Roosevelt were much too
modest about their own endeavors. Numerous powerful publishers and
their trained seals had been preparing the way for Truman for some
time before he arrived in Chicago. It was clear to every reporter, editor
and politician who got a good look at President Roosevelt in this period
that the Vice-President would stand a good chance to finish out the
fourth term. It was clear to'all that the outcome of the 1944 convention
struggle over the Vice-Presidency might determine the direction of the
Democratic Party and the national government for many years to come.
The selection of Truman as a possible compromise man for the anti-New
Deal stand in Chicago is clear in the lines of his build-up^ in the volume,
the tone and the effect of the publicity he received in the work of the
Senate Wartime Investigating Committee.

Senator Truman deserves much credit for that work; and while a com-
mittee chairman customarily reaps all the personal glory, the fact cannot
be ignored that his favorable press had the proportions of a concerted
campaign and his principal pluggers were magazin^and newspaper edi-
tors who were praying for a Democratic leader who knew the New Deal
routine and yet was safe. Harry Truman met the specifications almost
to a unique degree. Jimmy Byrnes was a good conservative in the mpq-
circle but he had been out of the traditional line of advancement for some

PAY-OFF 3*3

time, he was intimately identified with the Southern Bourbons and un-
acceptable to labor. Senator Truman had the best New Deal voting record
in the Senate next to Joe Guffey; he was solid with labor, he had risen to
his present eminence in the elective field, and yet he was essentially a
conservative.

Truman's appointments since he became President, and his perfunc-
tory efforts to get action on Rooseveltian measures he has called for, have
impressed the fact of his conservatism on the nation. But long before the
C J.O. and the brilliant New York leftist observers began to understand
the man from Missouri, many practical politicians, businessmen and
newspapermen had correctly placed Truman and were not confused by
his voting record. President Roosevelt did not admit him to the New
Deal inner circle, and rarely saw him personally. Truman's intimates
in Washington were not Ickes, Wallace and Hopkinp. Senator Bennett
Clark of Missouri, Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and John
Nance Garner, Vice-President until 1937, were among the men in the
Senate with whom he was closest.

Commenting on Truman's reputation as a liberal, Roy A. Roberts,
managing editor of the Star, wrote in 1944 that Truman ha4 not seen
FJDJR., personally more than five or six times, adding: "The Senator's
close friends, and especially his colleagues, knew that at heart he was an
old-fashioned Missourian not a pink or a reformer."

The quality of convention generalship was very high in the Truman-
Hannegan camp in 1944. It was particularly adroit in the important busi-
ness of rumor-spreading, and Mr. Hannegan exhibited an uncommon
grasp on the art of publicity. His chief contribution, which was the thing
that clinched the vice-presidential nomination for Truman, was the
famous letter from President Roosevelt, stating that he would be pleased
to accept either Justice Douglas or Senator Truman as his running mate.

Politicians' and editors had worked together to make one other large
contribution to this situation. That was the business of the Southern re-
volt against Henry Wallace, led by the Texas Bourbons. For weeks the
anti-Roosevelt press played up the maneuvering of the rebels, producing
much smoke and clamor but little fire. New Dealers countered by having
Roosevelt put the squeeze on Jesse^ Jones, the Texas businessman in his
Cabinet, and when the Southern hotheads assembled in Chicago for their

384 TOM'S TOWN

and- Wallace demonstration they made a pathetic show, which the press
charitably played down. But the purpose had been served of impressing
on the absent Roosevelt that it would be impolitic to press for Wallace as
hard as he did in 1940. At the climax of the struggle, Wallace took the
convention floor with the speech that made it clear to all that the Demo-
crats would accept or reject the New Deal crusade in their decision on
his candidacy, and for a moment it appeared that the popular demonstra-
tion for him would stampede the convention his way. But the city bosses
and the old line practical politicians from Washington were prepared
for this emergency. The convention chairman quickly adjourned the con-
vention to protect the delegates from the roar of the crowds and permit
the negotiations in the hotel rooms to be completed. The amateurs had
nothing more in their bag of tricks and the next day the nomination went
to Truman. He stood before the convention, giving a convincing impres-
sion of a modest man overwhelmed by his good fortune. It was said that
he hacjn't asked for the nomination and didn't want to be Vice-President,
but there was no hesitancy in his acceptance, and the record showed that
he had moved unerringly toward the main chance.

Senator Truman came home and was the honor guest at a massive re-
ception given by the business leaders, at which he found himself the hero
of numerous prominent Willkie Democrats and Republicans. The air
of rejoicing among the Republicans was so pronounced that it seemed
this was being celebrated as the G.O.P. victory of 1944. Mr. Truman also
found himself the object of flattering attention from the Star, and a popu-
lar local gag of the period was that the Republican newspaper was trying
to elect Truman Vice-President and Tom Dewey to the Presidency at
the same time. While the old Boss's faithful friend was being thus hon-
ored, the reform paper hauled out the machine stainer for use against
a couple of other Democrats who were running for state offices. This new
agitation over the machine scandals grew intense but didn't defeat the
candidates against whom it was aimed. When the election smoke finally
cleared, Missouri had gone Democratic again and Roosevelt was in for
the fourth term. However, the Republicans found some consolation in
an upset victory in the. senatorial race. And, of course, everybody in
Jackson County was happy that Harry made it all right.

PAY-OFF 385

Tom Pendergast had little time left in which to put his final affairs in
order. He declined rapidly in the final months of 1944. Perhaps he was
depressed by the revival of the boss scandal^ during the campaign. Cer-
tainly he had some reason for supposing at this time that the machine
skeleton would be rattled forever over the Goats, and he would never
know peace again on this earth. Doubtless he derived considerable satis-
faction from the vindication of Harry Truman, but the conduct of the
campaign could have left him under no illusions that there would be any
forgiving and forgetting for T. J. Pendergast himself.

Pendergast's thoughts were on the judgment of the people, and he
broke his long silence late in October, 1944, two weeks before the gen-
eral election, to speak up in his own behalf. He must have realized the
end was near for he welcomed the opportunity to justify himself before
the public and say a word of farewell. He was interviewed by Harry
Wohl of the St. Louis Star-Times in his Ready-Mixed Concrete office.

"At seventy-two," he said, "it is too late to get back into politics, to start
the day's work at five or six o'clock in the morning, to see my friends
from morning until night. No. I am too old for that.

"But if I were a young man I would engage actively in politics again*
Politics is a great game and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

"All I want to do is go ahead with my business here, to provide for my
family and to take care of any poor friends as I did in the past. I'd like to
do this for a long time to come.

"Pve had a good life. I got into trouble, but I am not blaming anybody
but myself.

"I've done a lot for Kansas City for the poor of JCansas City. I've done
more for them than all the big shots and bankers, all of them put to-
gether. We used to take care of our poor, with coal and wood and food
and rent, and we tfelped them in their trouble. We never asked the poor
about their politics.

"And I've never broken my word. Put this dovfia: I've never broken
my word to any living human being I gave it to. That is the key to suc-
cess in politics or anything else."

He died three months later, at nine-forty o'clock the night of January
26^ 1945, st ^ an cxite in bis home town, leaving a debt that took virtually
all of the one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in personal holdings

3 86 TOM'S TOWN

to which his once large estate had shrunk. All the rest had gone to his
wife, his children and lawyers, and to pay the costs o his illness and his
settlement with the government,

A crowd filled Visitation Church to overflowing and extended to the
street at the Pendergast funeral services. The priest spoke quietly, saying
the things that properly could be said about a man who had charitable
instincts and overpowering ambitions, who did some good things and
made some mistakes. "Some always look for the evil," the priest said.
"They never look for the good. Mr. Pendergast never maliciously in-
jured the character of anyone. We all know he was a man of his word.
I have heard men say they would rather have his word than his note. We
all have faults. We are all human beings."

The theme of a sermon ran through the priest's words. "A man who
tries to find happiness through money or power never finds it," he said.

There were numerous prominent citizens and former public officials
among the mourners, but all attention was centered on Vice-President
Harry Truman, who flew from Washington to attend the services. He
could easily have found an excuse to stay in the capital but he hurried to
Kansas City in an Army bomber, arriving shortly before the funeral.

After the services Vice-President Truman chatted briefly with friends
who crowded around him. There were a few final words between Jimmy
Pendergast, the new head of the Jackson Democratic Club, and the club's
vice-president who had become the Vice-President of all the American
people. Mr. Truman was in a hurry to get back to the Army bomber
which was waiting for him at the airport in the industrial West Bottoms,
where this story began more than sixty years ago. He had an engagement
to fill in Philadelphia before returning to Washington and events were
rushing on him. It was seventy-three days before he was called to the
White House to take the oath of office as the Thirty-third President of
the United States.

Index

Adams, D. S., 223, 242, 243

American Automobile Club, 269

Anerican Federation of Labor, 302

American House, 25

American Magazine, 227

American Protective Association, 31, 36

Amos *n* Andy, 126-27

Anderson, Harold, 369

Anthon, Ferris, 259, 260, 263

Armour, J. Ogden, 103

Aylward, James P., 76, 270, 271

Backstrom, Frank H., 242, 243, 312
Bailey, Harvey, 254, 255, 257, 258, 261
Baltimore Convention (Democratic 1912),

203

Barker, Ma, 255
Barrow, Clyde, 255
Barton, Florence, 102
Bash, Thomas B., 245, 260-61, 282, 283,

317

Battalion o Death, 208; see also Senate

(U.S.);.Reed, James A.
Battle Row, 24, 67
Baughman, Booth, 86-87
Beach, Albert I., 117, 118, 120, 126-27,

139

Bell, C. Jasper, 270, 382
Bell, Samuel Bookstaver, 25
Benanti, Frank, 220
Benson, Oscar, 107, 108
Bennett, Harry, 302
Bennett, John G^ 193
Bennett, Myrtle A., 193
Benton, C. R., 241, 242
Benton, Senator Thomas Hart, 28, 354, 356
Benton, Thomas Hart (artist), 354"57
Billings, James V., 306
Birkhead, L. M., 190
Blackman, Earl, 188
Blair, Sam C,, 338
Blood, Charles I., 42
Blue River, 19* 233
B*Nai Jehudah, 189, 198

Bolivar (Mo.), 257

Bonfils, Frederick G., 103

Boodling, 60

Boulevards, see Park System

Bourk, Gil P,, 322

Bowersock, Justin D., 239-40

Bowman, Euday, 91

Boyle, William D., 323-24, 336

Brewer, Harry, 164

Bribers, 60

"Bridlewise Jim," see Reed, James A.

Brinkley, J. R., 129

Brown, Darius A., 199

Brown, George N., 178

Brown, Mrs. Nat, 213

Brush Creek, 45, 183

Bryan, William J., 20 3> 272

Bulger, Miles, 104-09, 112, 114-15, 141*

267, 268
Bull Moose, 47, 77; see also Roosevelt,

Theodore

Bureau o Internal Revenue, 325-26
Burke, Fred (Killer), 254
Burnett, Ernie, 91
Burnett, W. E., Jr., 135, 336
Byrnes James F., 382*

CaJffrey, R. J., 258

Caidwell, Robert B., 360

Campbell, William, 43

Canal Ring, 40, 41

Capper, Arthur,. 173

Cappo, Larry, 242

Cardwell, W. O., 56-57

Carlson, Conwcll, 347, 348

Carollo, Charles V., 218, 249 251, 262,

315, 3i6, 318, 320-21, 322, 330, 338,

366

Cavaness, E. W., 126
Chamber of Commerce, 18, 123, 127, 150,

151, 176, 1 80, 183, 200, 215, 223, 224,

225, 354, 3^0
Chanute, Octave, 21

387

INDEX

Charter, 47, 115-18, 140, 197* 228, 33*5
Amendment (1940), 339> 362; League,
115, 199, 200, 300, 333; Party, 360,

3^3

Chester, Denzel (Denny), 102
Chicago Convention (Democratic, 1932),

206-07, 208, 212-13
Chouteau, Francois, 21
Christenscn, Heda, 344
Chronicle of an American Crusader, 194,

I95n.; see also Mayerberg, Samuel S.
CI.O-, 302, 383
Citizens-Fusion, 231, 300; see also Coalition

Campaign

Citizens Party, 231, 372-74, 375
City Charter, see Charter
Civic Improvement Committee, 180-81; see

also Committee of 1,000
Civic Research Committee, see Kansas City

Civic Research Institute
Clark, Bennett C., 203, 224, 270, 271, 272,

273, 274, 306, 309, 381, 383
Clark, Champ, 171, 203
Clark, Charles H., 157-58
Clendening, Logan, 357-59
Click, Clarence, 344 34^, 348, 35
Climax Saloon, 25
Coalition Campaign, 300, 303, 304, 360;

see also Citizens-Fusion
Coates, Kersey, 21, 26, 42
Coatcs House, 27, 149, 177
Cochran, John J., 273, 274
Cole, Lloyd, 249
Collier's, 38

Collins, Roy T., 147, 148
Columbia (Mo.), 190
Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, 190
Combine, the, 37, 43, 46
Combs, George H., Jr., 121-22
Comer, Mrs. Russell C., 363-64
Committee of 1,000, 181, 182, 183; see

also Civic Improvement Committee
Congress, see House of Representatives;

Senate (U.S.)

Congressional Record, 169
Connell, Charles, 147
Convention Hall, 163, 312, 314
Cookingham, L. P., 338, 371
Cookson Hills (Okla.) 257
Coolidgc, Calvin, 51, 115, 161, 177
Copeland, Royal S., 243
Corrigan (Bernard) Mule Car Line, 41-42
Council of Churches, 312
Country Bookkeeping, 124, 333-34, 336
Country Club district, 142, 193, 358
County Court (Jackson County), 83* 105,

106, 184, 266, 268, 269
Cowherd, William S., 30, 63

Crittenden, T, T., 83, 84
Cromwell, Frank, 112
Cronin*s Saloon, 59
Crowe, Martin, 59
Cuban Gardens, 166
Curry, John Stcuart, 356
CWA, 182, 183

Dahlby, Mrs. A. J., 311-14

Davenport, Joseph J., 42

Davis, James J. (Puddler Jim), 224

Deficit (totals), Kansas City, 334-35

DeGraff, Harmon O., 190-91

Democratic Aid Society, 98, 100, 102, 104

Democratic Club of Kansas City, 309

DeMotte, R. J., 360

Department of Justice, 224, 202

Depression, 8, 168, 173, 176, 227

De Valera Eamon, 347

Dewcy, Thomas E., 325, 384

Dickey, Walter S., 102-03, 129

Dickmann, Bernard L., 273, 380

Dillinger, John, 256

Direct Primary Law, 61, 63

Dods, Thomas, 356

Donegan, Joseph, 89-91

Donnelly, Mrs. Nell, n, 95-96, 212-13

Donnelly Garment Company, 54

Douglas, James M., 306, 308, 309, 383

Drennon, William M., 338-39

Eagles, Fraternal Order of, 180, 214, 223,
224

Eastside Musicians Club, 144

Eckert, Walter H., 322

Edson, C. L., 22

Edward VIII, king of England, 286, 287

Edward Hotel, 89, 90, 93; Cabaret, 89, 91

Edwards, Charles, 198

Election Board, 118, 122, 140, 174, 238,
239, 286, 287, 295, 296, 301

Election Frauds, 62, 284-94

Elections: 1892, 29, 30; 1894, 30, 31; 1905,
475 1898, 51; 1900, 51, 52, 56; 1904, 58,
59, 60, 61; 1908, 63, 72; 1910, 65; 1916,
82, 83, 84, 85; 1924, 107, 108, 109,
112, 113, 114; 1925, 116, 117, 118, 120,
121, 122; 1930, 146, 150, 168, 173,
174, 175; 1931, 181; 1934, 237, 238,
239, 241, 242, 243, 274, 275; 1936, 279,
280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 286, 287; 1938,
298, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309;
1940, 364; 1944, 374, 383; 1946, 376

Ellis, E. C^ 174-75

El Torreon Ballroom, 186," 187, 188

Emporia (Kansas) Gazette t 38

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 145
t^ John, 250

INDEX

389

"Epic of Kansas City," 22-23
Eureka Petroleum Company, 96

Farley, James A., 224, 236, 272, 304

Farm Board, 172

Federal Aid, 172, 182, 185

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 146, 261,

287, 325, 365, 376
Feinberg, Jake, 164, 166
Felonie, Robert J., 326
Fennelly, Joseph C., 226, 227-28, 243, 362
Field, Eugene, 39
Fifth Congressional District (Jackson

County, Mo.), 168, 270
Fifty-Fifty, 8, 66, 77, 82-83, $4-85, 95 9$,

IOO, 112, 114

Finley, William, 241

Finnigan, Thomas, 164

Fisher, Paul, 326

Fitzgerald, Thomas F,, 295-96

Flacy, Lee, 242, 246

Floyd, Charles (Pretty Boy), 254, 256, 257,

258, 259, 261
Flynn, William, 108
Folk, Joseph W., 50, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67,

165

Fonda, Abraham, 19
Ford, Henry, 302
Fordyce, Samuel W., 206-07
fort Wayne (Indiana) Sentinel, 39
Fortune Club, 31 4, 3*5, 318, 320
Forward Kansas City Committee, 333, 337,

338, 360, 363
Fournais, Jacques, 21
Fourth Congressional District (Jackson

County, Mo.), 270

Franchise, street-car, 41-42, 53, 78, 80
Funk, Richard, 367

Gadwood, John, 241, 242, 246, 247
Gage, John B., 362, 364, 37*
Gallipolis (Ohio), 29
Gamewell Gouge, 53 '

Gargotta, Charles, 60, 317, 322
Garner, John N., 204, 212, 213, 383
Garrett, Ruby D., 153, 157, 214, 245, 339
^General Assembly (Mo.), 80, 191, 294,

328, 355; see also Legislature
Gentry, North Todd, 190
Gjfcorge V, king of England, 145, 179
Goldman, George L., 122
Gorton, Mrs. George H., 363, 364
Gossett, A. N.ri54, 156, 157* i$8, 217-18,

245, 246 '

Government Study Club, 196-97
Graham, Charles W., 284
Grandview (Mo.), I7* 266
Grant, W, T., 360

Graves, Marjorie (M.P.), 132
Graves, W. W., Jr., 315, 316, 31% 3"
Great American Insurance Company, 275
Greineri Russell F., 223
Grundy County (Mo,), 101
Gauldoni, L. J., 206
Gunn, Raymond, 191, 192
Guthrie, Joseph A., 73-77

Hadley, Herbert S., 61, 2, 63, 67, 68, 99
Hammer and Padlock Clubs, 45
Hannegan, Robert E., 380, 381, 383
Hannibal & St Joseph R. R., 21
Harding, Warren G., 51, 103, 104
Haskell, H. J., 46, 211, 240-41, 244
Haughton, Charles, 163-64, 167-68
Hay, Charles M., 306
Heart of America, 7, 142, 176, 177, 179,

190, 230

Heart of America Walking Club, 177, 179
Hedrick, Rex V., 174
Heim Brewery, 47
Henderson, Mitchel, 282, 283
Hershon, Joe, 192, 193, 194, 350
Hickok, Wild Bill, 24
Hicks, Ernest E., 325
Higgins, Otto P., 247, 261, 263, 322, 324-

25, 328, 33<>

Hill, A. Ross, 232-33, 236, 238, 243
Hines, Edgar, 268

Hirth, William, 281-82, 305, 306-07
Hofman, Charles, 193
Hofman, Mayme, 193
Home Rule, 55-56, 58, 140, 143, 146, 152,

156-5% 185, 188, 189, 195, 196, 248,

252, 253, 256, 257, 259, 261, 328, 333,

343

Hoover, Herbert C., 51, 161, 172, 173, 188,

213, 228

Hoover, J. Edgar, 325, 326, 365
Hopkins, Harry, 172, 182, 183, 383
House of Representatives, 63, 202
Houston Convention (Democratic, 1928)^

204, 205

Howell, Charles M., 203, 270
Hughes, Charles E., 103
Hunt, Mrs. J. Howard, 225
Huselton, Howard, 356
Hyde, Arthur M., 100-02, 141, 172, 173
Hyde, Dr. B. Clark, 64, 65, 193
Hynd, Alan, 343

Ickes, Harold, 383

Igoe, William L., 273

Independence (Mo,), 20, 63, 106, 141, 145,

171, 174, 267, 268, 316, 374
Industrial Relations Commission, 54

39

INDEX

Insurance settlement, 275-79, 2 9^> 2 97> 3 2 4*

26, 376
International Ladies* Garment Workers

Union, 54
Irey, Elmer L. 9 326

Jackson, Andrew, 53, 184

Jackson County (Mo.), I9 34, 35 4p> 4**

43, 5<> 53, 54, 56, 61, 63, 73. i<>

168, 169, 171, 183
Jackson Democratic Club (Kansas City),

130-34, 136, 276; see also Main Street,

1908

Jacobs, Floyd E., 113
Jacobson, Edward, 266
Jacoby, Clark E., 238
James, Frank, 89
James, Jesse, 24, 63, 355. 35$
James, Jesse, Jr., 63
Jameson, W. Ed., 305
Jaudon, Ben, 120

Jefferson, Thomas, 53, 92, 172, 173
Jefferson Cabaret, 87, 90-91
Jefferson City (Mo.), 7, 55, 57> 60, 140,

283, 296
Jeerson Hotel, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92,

93

JcfTcrsoman Democratic Club, 322

Jenkins, Burris, 190

Jobe, Henry, 19

Johnson, Tom, 50, 372

Johnston, T. W., 42

Jones, James M., 51-52

Jones, Jesse, 383

Jones, Samuel Milton (Golden Rule), 50,

372

Joplin (Mo.), 258

Jost, Henry L., 78, 82-83, 84, 85, 168, 169
Journal-Post, sec Kansas City Journal-Post

Kansas, 19, 20; Indians, 19; River, 18, 20;

Territory, 19

Kansas City (pop.), 8, 23
Kansas City Art Institute, 105, 354, 356,

357

Kansas City Bar Association, no, 306
Kansas City Civic Research Institute, 115,
123, 125, 126, 184, 185, 326; see also
Matscheck, Walter
Kansas City Club, 154, 313
Kansas City Journal-Post, 103, 129, 332
&msa$ City Star, 8; (Chap, i) 22, 30, 37,
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46; /Chap.
2) 47 49, 5* 52, 53> 56, 58, 59, 61,
69, 73 74> 77. 78 &> 81, 82, 86,
88, 92; (Chap. 3) loo, 103, 104, 108,
no, 120, 128, 129, r39 I3i *34* ^4i
142, 148, 153, 154; (Chap* 4) *8i, 183,

194, 197,
228, 229,
247, 262;
286, 292,
(Chap. 6)
362, 363,
Kansas City
1 80, 181,

200, 208, 211, 216, 218, 226,
239, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246,
(Chap. 5) 268, 281, 283, 284,
300, 301, 303, 304, 306, 309;
315, 323, 328, 332, 346, 360,
370, 372, 374, 375, 376, 384
Ten-Year Bond Program, 176,
182-85, 228, 233, 334, 336,

Kansas City Times, 39

Kansas City University, 367

Kansas State College, 165

Kansas State Prison, 261

Katz, Isaac, 148, 149

Katz, Michael, 148-50, 151

Kawsmouth, 18, 21, 22, 23, 27, 38, 39

Keck, Martin, 70

Kehoe, William E., 108

Kelley, Hubert, 228

Kelly, Machine Gun, 254, 259, 261

Kemp, William E., 243, 372

Kemper, James M., 302

Kemper, W. T., 58, 59, 122

Kessler, George E., 44, 188

Killingsworth, Jack, 257

Kimbrell, Bert S., 152

Kirkwood, Laura Nelson, 129

Krock, Arthur, 288

Ku Klux Klan, 95, 113, 267, 268-69 '

LaCapra, Michael James (Jimmy Needles),

259, 263

La Follette, Robert M., Sr., 50
Lake Lotawana, 249
Landon, Al M., 19, 275
Latshaw, Ralph S., 193
Lawyers' Association of Kansas City, 306
Lazia, John, 159, 160, 163, 166, 186, 187,

189, 196, 198, 201, 218, 248-52, 253,

256, 257, 261-64, 311, 321
Lazia^ Marie, 259, 262 ,

League of Nations, 53, 207, 208
Legislature, 24, 25, 55, 56, 61, 66, 73, 156,

232, 270, 301, 333; see also General As-

sembly

Lewis, J. V., 338, 339
Little Italy, 71, 220, 249-50
Little Tammany, 109, 112, 114
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Sr., 209
Long, Breckenridge, 207, 209, 211
Longan, George B., 244
Lower, Louis G., 243
Luhnow, Hal W., 360
Lusco, Joe, 242
Lyman, Tommy, 90

Madden, John G., 129-30

Mafia, 250 ,

INDEX

391

Main Street, 1908, 130-31, 132, 133, 134,
136, 147, M8, 202, 278, 280, 304, 376;
sec also Jackson Democratic Club

Mann, Conrad H., 179-81, 182, 183, 184,
185, 214-15, 223-25

Marie, queen of Rumania, 126

Mark Twain, 355

Market Square, 24, 29, 33, 67, 68, 87, 130,

i 5 8

Marks, Thomas R., 68-69, 99-100, 102,

104

Marshall, Thomas Riley, 209
Maryville (Mo.), 191
Matheus, Elijah, 131
Matscheck, Walter, 115-16, 123, 125, 126,

128, 184, 185, 370; see also Kansas City

Civic Research Institute
Mayerberg, Samuel S., 189-90, 191-92,

194-95* 196-200, 220, 226, 300, 350,

376

Mayflower (snagboat), 233
Maxie, Gold Tooth, 164
McAdoo, William Gibbs, 204, 212
McCollum, Earl, 244
McCormack, A. L., 276, 277, 279, 284,

322, 326, 378, 379
McCoy, Alvin S., 197
McCoy, John C,, 20
McCrory, Phil, 86
McDaniel, Lawrence, 380
McElroy, H. F M (Chap. 3) 106, 107, 113,

122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129,

130, 138, 140, I45 146, I47> 152, I53

156, 157, 158, 159, 160; (Chap. 4) 1^2,

184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 195, 196, 197,

198, 200, 201, 215, 2l6, 217, 220, 221,
225, 232, 233, 234, 236, 243, 244, 246,

247, 248, 255, 256, 262; (Chap, 5) 267,
268, 297, 299, 302, 303, 304; (Chap. 6)
312, 313, 314, 33i 332> 334, 336,
337, 338, 340. 34i 344* 34^, 349>
35*> 352, 353 358, 359

McElroy, H. R, Jr., 340, 344

McElroy, Mary, 247, 255-56, 263, 34-53

McElroy Emergency Fund, 336; see also
Country Bookkeeping

McGee, George, 344, 346, 348, 349

McGee, Walter, 344* 34$, 347> 348, 349,
350, 352

McGowan, Hugh J,, 46

McKittrick, Roy, 315

McMahon, Edward, 309

McMillan, Bo, 165

McRill, Kirby, 177-79

Mehornay, Robert L., 360

Metropolitan Street Car Company, 53, 78

Meyer, August R., 44, 180

Meyer, Max, 191

Milbura Golf Club, 346

Miles, John L., 141-42, 143, 144-45, 146,

152, 164

Miller, Verne, 254, 257, 261
Milligan, Jacob L., 273
Milligan, Maurice M., 274, 282, 287, 289-

90, 291, 292, 293, 306, 321, 323, 325>

326, 327, 38i
Miner, Paul V., 284
Ministerial Alliance (Kansas City), 197,

215, 246, 312

Ministerial Alliance (Liberty, Mo.), 166
Mission Hills Country Club, 313
Missouri Ave., No. 3, 24, 25
Missouri Capitol, 355

Missouri Insurance Agents" Association, 276
Missouri River, 18, 20, 24, 25, 38
Missouri University, 170, 190-91
Mitchell, Ewing Y., 235, 236
Mob Primary, 30, 107
Montgomery, E. E., 267
Montgomery, George S., 374
Mooney, Tom, 63
Moose, Loyal Order of, 224
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 326
Morss, Samuel E., 39
Mowrer, O. H., 190, 191
Mulkey Square, 18, 23, 72
Munger, Mrs. Williston P., 363, 364
Municipal Airport, 127, 128
Municipal Auditorium, 182, 351
Murphy, Frank, 325, 326
Murray, Matthew S., 271, 330
Murray, W. H. (Alfalfa Bill), 297, 2*2
Mussolini, Benito, 347
"Mysterious Mr. Brown,** 56", 57

Nash, Frank, 254, 258, 259

Nation, Carrie, 19, 101

National Association of Manufacturers, 172

National Youth Movement, 223, 226-28,

230, 231-32, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238,

239, ^43-44, 300, 360
Nelson, Arthur W., 113
Nelson, Horatio, 39
Nelson, William Rockhill, 7, 8, 30, 37-47,

49, 50, 52, 58, 61, 66, 72-78, 80-82,

no, 120, 129, 130, 131, 180, 181, 21 i r

370

Nelson Gallery of Art, 81
Nelson Trust, 81, 129
New Deal, 53, 169, 172, 204, 235, 243,

272, 275, 288, 306, 384
New York, 40, 41* 219, 281, 354
Nichols, J. C., 302,342, 358
Nigro, D. M., 262

Ninth Ward Democratic Club, Inc., 97
Nonpartisan Charter, see Charter

392

INDEX

Nonpartisans, 9, 37> 4$, 47, 77 78, "5-
18, 122, 126, 140, 359, 3^3, 3^4, 3^9,

37i

North Kansas City, 127
North Side Democratic Club, 159, 259
N.Y.M., sec National Youth Movement

Oak Hall, 45, 80, 81

"Ode to an Aerolite," 154, 156

O'Flahcrty, Vincent, Jr., 360

O'Grady, Steve, 89

O.K. Creek, 34, 131

Old Town (Kansas City), 8, 67, 68, 69,

70, 87, 164
Oldham, P. W., 242

O'Malley, R. Emmet, 8, 84, 137, 276, 277,

282, 284, 295, 296-97, 306, 326, 327,

329, 33<>, 378
One Hundred Twenty-ninth Field Artillery,

Battery A, 141, 266; Battery D, 141, 266,

267
Otis, Merrill E., 253, 261, 291, 293, 328,

329, 377, 378
Overly, Joseph, 138, 139

Page, James R,, 139, 151, 158-59, 16, *96,
198, 215-16, 218, 220-22, 223, 224, 311

Page, Walter Hines, Fellowship, 142

Parent-Teachers Association, 216, 225, 311,
3"

Park, Guy B., 202, 241, 243, 283, 349, 350

Park system, 43-46

Parker, Bonnie, 255

Paving monopoly, 53

Pegler, Westbrook, 298-300

Pcndergast, Eileen, 283

Pendergast, James (Alderman Jim), 8, 17,
18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 30, 31-32, 34,
35, 36, 37, 38, 47* 48, 56, 58, 70,

71, 72, 77, 82, 83, 85, 86, 97, 131*
133, 157, 266, 364

Pendergast, James M., 18, 97, 98, 133, 204,
266, 267, 270, 305, 325, 370, 373, 374,
386

Pendergast, John, 32

Pendergast, Marceline, 135

Pendergast, Michael J,, 32, 33, 34, 37, 82,
95-98, 1 06, 133, 266, 267, 269

Pendergast, T. J., 7, 8, 17, 32, 33, 34, 36,
37j (Chap. 2) 64, 66, 70, 77, 82,
B3-S5, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,
93-945 (Chap. 3) 97, 98, 99, 104,
105, 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114,

115, JI7, 120, 121, 122, 123, 128,

130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135* 136*

137, 138, 139, 140, 147, 148, 150,

152, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, i68>

169, 174; (Chap. 4) I7& I77> ifo>

l8l, 183, 185, 189, 198, 201, 202,

203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 213,

214, 215, 2l6, 2l8, 219, 22O, 223,

224, 236, 242, 243, 248, 249, 251,
256, 262; (Chap. 5) 265, 266, 267,
269, 270, 271, 272, 278, 279, 283,
284, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298,
299, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307,
308, 309, 3io; (Chap. 6) 322, 323,
324, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331,
350, 354, 355, 359, 377, 380, 384,
385, 386

Pendergast, T. J., Jr., 147, 381

Pendergast, Mrs. T. J., 148

Pendergast House, 25

Pendergast saloons, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32,
33, 47, 48

Pendergast statue, 17-18, 72

Perrine, A. E., 147

Perry, Alfred P., 142-43

Perry, J. W., 360

Pershing, John J., 226, 356

Phelps, William H., 57

Philadelphia, 219; Convention (Democratic,
1936), 281

Platte County (Mo.), 166

Pleasant, Carl, 137-39

Police Board, 100, 118, 140, 145, 146,

195, 333
Police Department, 53, 69, 71, 84, 92, 185,

195, 196, 197, 199, Z2I, 222, 246, 247,

252

Political Action Committee, 376

Polk County (Mo.), 257

Poosey, 1 01

Port Fonda, 19

Portman, Benny, 149, 322

Potee, Bob, 24, 25, 164

Prather, Kirk, 257

Prohibition, 49, 89, 91, 93, 115, 131, 137,

144, 146, 163, 211, 219, 251
Prosperity, 161, 172
Prudhomme, Gabriel, 19
Pryor, Arthur, 176
Pryor, Fighting Jim, 31
Pryor, John J., 31, 86, 323-24, 328, 330,

336

Quality Hill, 26, 34, 35i, 352
Queen Mary, 280, 325, 336

Radio Corporation of America, 173
Rankin, Alex S., 223, 238, 243, 315
Rathford Engineering Company, 336
Rayen, Arley, 167, 168
Ready-Mixed Concrete Company, 128, 131,
132, 133* 136, I37> 139, 377 37$

INDEX

393

Real Estate Board, 123, 176, 232, 234-35,
360

Reed, James A., 8, 49-53, 54, 55, 5^, 58,
59, 60, 63-67, 85, 101, 102, 131,
170, 171, 172, I73 192, 193, 195,
196, 203-05, 206, 207-14, 238, 272,
273, 274, 356, 363, 375, 381

Reed, Laura Coates, 21

Reed, Lear B., 333, 365-69

Reeves, Albert L., 287, 288-89, 291-92,
3ii 317, 3i8, 320, 321

Reeves, Albert L., Jr., 376

Regan, Martin, 88

Reily, E. Mont, 103-04

Remus, George, 163

Reppert, E. C. 9 195, 241, 243, 245, 246,

247

R.F.C., 172

Richetti, Adam, 254, 256, 258, 259
Riverside Park Jockey Club, 142, 165, 166
Roberts, Roy A., 211, 244, 383
Rogers, Harry Clayton, 245
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 8, 53, 168, 171,

204, 206, 207, 211, 212, 213, 214, 224,

225, 228, 268, 272, 292, 324, 325, 326,

382, 383

Roosevelt,. Theodore, 47, 50, 61, 77, 8 1
Roper, Daniel C., 236
Rose, Louis, 149
Ross, Michael, 46, 251
Rotary Club, 157, *99 339
Ryan, Frances, 293
Ryland, Robert K., 375

St. Joseph (Mo.) 5 21, 29, 32, 62, 296

St. Louis (Mo.), 54 5$, 57, 59, 60, 62, 91,
151, 163, 204, 205, 209, 210, 212, 273,
280, 290, 296, 306, 354, 380, 381

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 292, 306

St. Louis Republic, 56

St. Louis Star-Times, 385

San Francisco, 63, 178; Convention (Demo-
cratic, 1920), 178, 207

Sanitary Service Company, 328

Santa Fe Railroad, 170

Santa Fe Trail, 20

Saturn (steamboat), 86, 87

Schneider, Edward L., 328

Sedalia (Mo.), 306

Seibert, James Monroe, 57

Seltzer, Leo, 188

Senate (U. S,), 51, 63, 203,, 292, 293

Sermon, Roger T., 374

Servicemen's League, 238

Shameless Eight, 42

Shannahan, Edwin J., 176, 177

Shannon, Frank, 36

Shannon, Frank P., 170, 370, 373, 375

Shannon, Joseph B., 8; (Chap, i) 34, 35,
36, 37, 38; (Chap. 2) 50, 51, 53, 55,
58, 59, 60, 61, 66, 77, 78, 82, 83,
84, 85, 92; (Chap. 3) 95, 100, 104, 106,
109, 112, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 122,
141, 150, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173,
174, 175; (Chap. 4) 181; (Chap. 5) 267,
268, 271, 282; (Chap. 6) 363, 364, 381

Shannonville, 36

Shawnee (Kan.), 344

Shelley, George M., 58, 59

Shook, Edgar, 296, 365, 374

Skelton, Richard (Red), 187, 188

Slaughter, Roger C., 375, 382

Smith, Alfred E., 204, 205, 212

Smith, Bryce B., 152, 153, 157, 181, 198,
217, 234, 238, 245, 312, 328, 331-33,
336, 337-39, 360

Smith, Sidney May, 242, 243

Smith ville (Mo.), 165

"Snagboat Hank," 233; see also McElroy,
H. F.

Sni-a-Bar Farms, 184

Society for the Suppression of Commercial-
ized Vice, 91

Sons of Temperance, 101

Sousa, John Philip, 176

Southern, Allen C., 174, 218, 220, 311,
314-16, 317, 318

Spencer, Nat A., 91, 92

Spickardsville Crusaders, 101

Stark, Lloyd C., 8, 279-81, 282, 283, 287,
294, 295, 301, 304-06, 307-09, 310,
311, 314, 315, 316, 324, 326, 333, 338,

3$5 3^7, 381

State Line sewer project, 358, 359
Stayton, E. M., 183
Steffens, Lincoln, 60, 370
Stephens, Lon V., 210
Stevens, Clarence, 344, 346
Stewart, Mrs. Louise, 364
Stockyards, 18, 43, 51
Street, Charles R., 275, 276, 277, 284, 322,

325, 326, 329
Street, Julian, 38
Sulwell, Edna, 188
Stone, William Joel, 63
Stout, Ralph, 42
Sunday Spotlight ', 102
Supreme Court, Missouri, 62, 65, 66, 76,

122, 195, 282, 306, 347
Supreme Court, United States, 129, 378
Swope, Frances Hunton, 64
Swope, Thomas H., 65

Tammany Hall, 40, 236
Taxnmen, H. H., 103

394

INDEX

Tenth Ward, 95, 96; Democratic Club, Inc.,

95. 96

Ten-Year Bonds, see Kansas City Ten-Year-
Bond Program

Thiokol Corporation, 138, 139

Tilden, Samuel J., 40, 41

Townley, Webster, 243

Truman, Harry S., 8, 63, ro6, 113, 141,
169, 171, 174, 183, 184, 265-75* 291-
92, 293, 374, 375, 37$, 380-84, 3^5 386"

Truman, Margaret, 174

Tweed Ring, 40, 41, 109

Twelfth Street, 17, 18, 25, 59, 67, 89, 105,
137, 144, 148, 149, 160, 161, 163, 171,
241, 266, 287, 310

"Twelfth Street Rag," 91

Underhill, Wilbur, 254, 257, 261
Union Station Massacre, 2-57-59, 262
United Campaign, 362, 363, 372> 373
United States Senate, see Senate (U.S.)

Vandcnberg, Arthur H., 103
Veatch, N. T., Jr., 183
Visitation Church, 385
Volkcr, William, 360

Wagner, Joe, 161

Wagner Act, 54

Walkathon, 186-89

Wall Street, 54, 161

Wallace, George K. 121, 122, 134, 205,

208

Wallace, Henry A., 378, 383
-Walsh, Frank P., 53-55, 56-58, 59, 61, 63,

66, 75 339
Walsh, Jerome, 339, 376

Waltner, Marion D., 369

Walton, Jack, 96, 97

War Labor Board (Wilson's), 54

Ward Parkway, 5650, 128, 135, 147, 148,

277
Washington (D. C.), 213, 218, 223, 271,

272, 326
Water Leak, 336
Watson, E. M., 190
W.C.T.U., 91, 92
WDAF (Star's Radio Station), 239
Weissmann, Solly, 107, 108, 160-68
Welch, Casimir J., 59, 109-15, 120, 137,

1 68, 1 8 1, 242, 245
Wells, Arthur, 240
Welsh, George, 367-69
Welsh, Leila, 367-68
Welsh, Mrs. Marie, 367
Westport Landing, 20, 21
Wettest Block in die World, 27
Wheeler, Burton K., 383
White, William Allen, 38, 42, 176
White House, 169, 174, 214, 268, 269, 381,

386

Whittcn, Frederick E., 233, 243, 300
WHN (New York), 121
Wilson, Francis M., 202, 207, 208
Wilson, Woodrow, 8, 50, 53, 77, 131, 173,

203, 204, 207, 208, 209, 2IOj 211, 212

Wohl, Harry, 385
Wood, Grant, 356
World War I, 8, 141, 161, 249, 250, 251,

266

World War IT, 8
WPA, 182, 271, 330, 358, 359
Wright, Emory H., 369

Eugene C., 332

130775